


Never Doubt

by FawnoftheWoods



Series: Way leads onto Way [1]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Eventual Happy Ending, F/F, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Torture, M/M, Not Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Compliant, Post-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), Suicidal Thoughts, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-04
Updated: 2019-12-16
Packaged: 2020-09-27 08:46:42
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 8
Words: 24,837
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20404933
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FawnoftheWoods/pseuds/FawnoftheWoods
Summary: In the final Battle against Thanos, Tony is sent back in time.  Back to 1991.  He is determined to prevent the future he just left.  This time it will be better.Oh, I kept the first for another day!Yet knowing how way leads on to way,I doubted if I should ever come back





	1. Looked down as Far as I Could

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Wix](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wix/gifts).

> This is the start of a full series that will span all the way to present time. It ignores Endgame (partially because it wasn't out when I started this and partially because FU MCU!)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Preview Chapter: The fight with Thanos.
> 
> He looked down that path as far as he could  
Time to chose the path less traveled by

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> NOT ENDGAME COMPLIANT!!!!! Morgan doesn't exist!
> 
> Also this chapter is rather depressing and suicidal soldier tendencies are heavily mentioned

Tony loved his memory. He really did. Except when it replayed stuff for him that he would rather forget. But aside from that small issue, his memory was great. It was eidetic, unless dulled by drugs. But there were things he’d rather forget. He’d rather forget his father’s hatred. He’d rather forget Bain and Stone. He’d rather forget Obie’s look of covetous glee when he was yanking out Tony’s life. He’d rather forget Yinsen’s betrayal. And Phil’s. And Fury’s. And Natasha’s. 

And Steve’s.

He’d rather forget the look of betrayal on Peter’s face when he acted like his father. And on Pepper’s. And on Rhodey’s. And on Bruce’s. 

The look when he let Peter die.

All these things should pale in comparison to failing the planet. Really, you’d think the destruction of his species would be up there, but really, at the end of the day, Tony is only human. 

Thanos.

More than a god and somehow less than one. After his snap, nothing was paradise. Tony and Nebula had followed the monstrosity to Earth. They’d arrived just as the world was figuring out what had happened. Thor’s pain and guilt was matched only by Steve’s complete stoicism. Tony and Steve had just stared at each other. They were going after that gauntlet. This event refused to be accepted. 

Nebula turned out to be the key to finding Thanos. They gathered everyone left. A Captain Danvers returned, claiming to own Fury a favor. Must have been a pretty big favor because the woman had the strength of a small sun. A bunch of small times heroes came forward. Daredevil and Iron fist came up from Hell’s kitchen. They brought a nurse with them and a ton of grief about their own lost comrades. From overseas came many more as the Avengers sent out the call for a final battle. Russia sent Vanguard and Dark Star along with Iron Curtain, who apparently stowed away on the transport, but Tony wasn’t about the turn the older soldier away. Britain sent Captain Britain and once a upon a time Tony would have a lot to say about his name, but not now. They also got a dozen other British heroes, it seemed the UK had been on a recruiting spree since the Chitauri invasion. They also brought word that a team called Euroforce would meet them on the battlefield to help. Vaguely, Tony wondered spitefully where all this help had been before, but it was an irrelevant thought. By that point he didn’t care anymore and was leaving the collaborations to Rhodey. He took to offering an opinion when asked and no more.

Rhodey pulled Tony aside just before they left to fight the last fight.

“I’ve been watching.” Rhodey said.

“I see something.” He said.

“Steve’s not planning to come back from this.” He said.

When Tony asked how he knew that, Rhodey just looked him in the eyes. 

“Because it’s the same expression on your face, and I know you don’t intend to come back either.”

He wasn’t exactly wrong. Tony couldn’t fight that. He’d taken a moment to look at Steve and he saw what Rhodey likely saw. Steve had nothing left. Bucky’s return had shown Tony what Steve was really like when he had something. With Bucky taken from him again, Steve was done. For probably the third, maybe even the fifth time, his family was torn from him. The serum forcing him to endure. Rhodey was right.

Steve wasn’t coming back.

The fight was as chaotic as any fight ever was. Tony lost track of the others often. He and Steve ended up back to back. They always ended up here. Back to back, side by side, face to face. They didn’t seem to know any other way to exist near each other.

The gauntlet was right there. Steve dove for the arm, but they couldn’t pull it off. Thanos was stabbing Steve repeatedly, but the soldier would not let go. Tony shoved his current opponent away and swayed to his feet. His power was dropping alarmingly. If he still had his helmet on, it would be flashing at him. He met Steve’s failing gaze. They’d agreed before the battle. A private promise.

If they couldn’t undo the snap, they could make sure it never happened again. 

Steve’s shield came down on Thanos’s arm, severing the gauntlet and hand. Even Thanos noticed that. It gave Steve enough time to dive at the gauntlet. Tony had already rerouted all his power back to the main reactor in his chest. Steve hit the gauntlet with his shield. Tony’s eyes were blurring, he’d lost too much blood and the suit was holding his spine in place at this point.

Even with all that, he saw the stone fly into the air. He saw the light leave Steve’s eyes as he fell. He felt the light leave his eyes as he gave the final instruction to what was left of his tech.

_ Fire! _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What do you think? Like it? Hate it?


	2. Perhaps the Better Claim

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Its going to be different this time! He'll do better.
> 
> Then took the other, as just as fair,  
And having perhaps the better claim,  
Because it was grassy and wanted wear

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you like it

“Man, if you don’t wake up you gonna miss your ride!”

Tony groaned as he rolled over. 

Right. Off. The bed.

Rhodey’s laughter burst over him in spurts that told him his friend was trying to suppress it at least to sniggers. He opened his eyes and a skinny, giggling young man leaned over him. He sat up, groaning as his hip complained about being abused in no uncertain terms.

“Rhodey?” The twenty-something shook his head and reached out a hand.

“What the hell did you drink last night after I bailed? I mean, yeah she was hot, but really man. You gotta stop taking drinks from others.” Rhodey’s voice held some concern, but mostly irreverence. 

Tony blinked at him. It was Rhodey. It was a twenty-something Rhodey, but it was Rhodey. In fact, Tony saw a familiar mother hen look start to enter his face as Tony took longer to grasp his hand. 

Luckily, interacting with Rhodey remained instinctive, even with everything that happened. Falling into a hug from his Hunny Bear, he forced his muscles to relax and let Rhodey hold him up a moment before they separated. A small beeping caught his attention and he looked down to see DUM-E cock his claw at them. 

Tony blinked at him and shook his head a moment.

“Wait, what ride?”

Rhodey rolled his eyes. “Look I know you don’t wanna see the old jerk, but you’ve been talking about your Mom for a week. You even turned down a party in Lisbon to come home for Christmas early, you could at least stop pretending you aren’t looking forward to going home.

Tony snorted. He’d never looked forward to going home. Not since Jarvis died. He nodded and aimed himself at the bathroom. Rhodey called after him.

“You got 45 minutes, man. Better make this one of your quicker showers.” 

Tony rolled his eyes. He hadn’t learned how to shower faster than 25 minutes as a teen. He’d picked that up much older. Still, he shut the door. He did that sometimes, if his hangover was especially touchy that day. Which was good, because he needed a moment to pull himself together. He looked at himself in the mirror and nearly fell over as a twenty-something stared back at him.

Looking down, he took a deep breath before pitching his voice to not carry beyond the door.

“Okay, FRIDAY. End simulation.” 

He let out a shaky breath before opening his eyes again. Nothing had changed. He let off several expletives mentally before taking a deep breath to calm down. BARF hadn’t glitched like this since he finished the interface debugging, but it wasn’t impossible. Early experiments had shown that when this type of glitch happened, Tony could force a shut down of the system by simply removing the head link forcefully. Doing so during a glitch sucked, but it was doable. Tony closed his eyes and mentally created the imaginary glasses perched on his real face. Then he forced himself to believe in them and then he reached up and gently took them off.

When his eyes opened again, the glasses didn’t appear and the room didn’t disappear. Well, that didn’t work.

Tony jumped when banging on the door startled him a moment later. Rhodey again, yelling something about moving his arse. He grinned, Rhodey’s language had formalized considerably after 20 years in the air force. He’d missed this version.

A ten minute shower and slack-jawed Rhodey later, and Tony was waiting on the curbside. He remembered that the first time this had happened, he’d drowned himself in alcohol and pills before the driver came. Jarvis had been in DC for something until Dec 22nd and Tony hated someone else picking him up. Jarvis’s loss in ‘93 was harder in some ways than his parents and Ana had followed him within a month. Seeing someone else picking him up had angered him the first time around. Actually, until he hired Happy, he’d gone through drivers like M&Ms. 

This time, he’d hopped in the car and proceeded to ignore the driver in favor of the newspaper and Rhodey’s planner he’d swiped. His brick of a laptop was in his bag along with whatever Rhodey had tossed in there to get him through the next three weeks. It wasn’t like there weren’t clothes at the mansion.

The newspaper was helpful, if only to get him in the mindframe of 1991. He looked at the date for almost 20 minutes. December 16, 1991. His parents were going to die tonight. 

“FUCK!!!!!” He jumped as the car swerved. He hadn’t meant for that to be out loud. He closed his eyes and tried to review the last thing he remembered. There was the fight. Steve had removed the monster’s hand and gauntlet. He’d hit the stones. Tony had fired.

The stone.

The time stone had been the closest stone to Tony. It would have been hit first. All the other effects would have happened in the battle, but the time stone didn’t work that way. Tony winced. Maybe the other effects wouldn’t follow him through the timestream. It did mean he needed to figure that out. He sighed. That was going to be complicated.

He opened Rhodey’s planner. The first thing that fell out was a note with his name on it.

“_ Dammit Tony, I told you to stop stealing my planner! You’d better call me when you get home to tell me my damn schedule to skinny little thief. Enjoy your holiday. _

_ -Rhodey _”

Tony smiled. That was his Sour Patch. Even 30 years later, Rhodey still predicted his actions better than anyone he’d ever known. He looked through the planner. It always had Tony’s schedule and Rhodey’s since the genius couldn’t remember his own at all without help. Even this close to his thesis, he still didn’t have a handle on college life. 

Tony forced himself to seriously think back. He’d never completed the PhD, instead defending his Master’s thesis in March and graduating in May so he could take over SI. He had another year or more to complete his dissertation. JARVIS _was_ his dissertation actually. It had taken him an extra four years to complete the program on top of SI. By then, Jarvis had passed, so JARVIS had been named such.

Obie had held down the fort until May, to let Tony complete the degree. And, now knowing what he knew, finished setting himself up to run the business and Tony the research. Tony didn’t actually remember much of January or February. Rhodey was the reason he’d actually shown up to his own thesis defense. Then he’d disappeared into an engineering haze to bring stock back up for SI. When he had emerged, what few real friends he’d had outside of Rhodey had moved on and Rhodey was overseas. That was when he’d met Stone. 

Well, he was definitely avoiding that Asshole.

Actually, he needed to make a list. Maybe several lists. _This_ was why he had AIs following him everywhere!

He got out a notepad from his bag. It took some time to find a page that didn’t have random coding on them. He started his list:

_** To Do ** _   
_ Build JARVIS(maybe rename him?) _   
_ Investigate Obie _   
_ Emphasize non-weapons departments at SI _   
_Save the parents_

Tony looked at that last item. He drew an arrow to place it first. He tried to remember where his parents were going tonight. Some vacation in the Caribbean, he thought. Likely by way of DC and not making it. Maybe meeting up with Jarvis at DC was the plan. He’d have to figure some way out. He couldn’t keep them safe forever this way, the Winter Soldier was too good. 

He looked at the short list and decided to make two more:

_** Avoid ** _  
_ Tiberias Stone _  
_ Destroying my liver _  
_ Afghanistan Vacations _  


_ **Think about** _   
_ Cellphones _   
_ Personal computers _   
_ Additional stones’ effects _   
_Finding Steve?_

They weren’t the longest lists, but this was why he had an AI keep track. He did better if he made the list ongoing instead of trying to sit down and figure it out in one go.

The car slowing caught his attention and he looked out the window to see the mansion. He sighed. This would be interesting.

* * *

His room hadn’t moved. He’d just dropped his bag there and wandered back out into the mansion. His father was likely in his study, but his mother was in her sitting room. Before, he’d come home and crashed on the couch until Maria woke him to say goodbye. This time, instead of a two-hour nap while she played piano, he knocked on his mother’s door.

“Come in.” 

He’d forgotten how much he loved her voice. He peaked around the door to see her working with her hair. She’d left the front streaks light blonde when her stylist had darkened the rest of her hair. Tony had always thought she was beautiful. When he was younger and she was less settled in the marriage, she’d spent a great deal of time on her looks, but as they both grew older she’d settled into a more mature beauty that she seemed content with.

“Mother.” He hadn’t seen her in more than 26 years in person. The holograph recreation wasn’t the same. It didn’t have her scent. It didn’t have her nervous ticks that the public did not know about. It didn’t know the way she brushed her hair or the smile that was only for him.

He was in front of her almost before she finished standing. He wrapped her carefully in a hug. When her arms came up under his shoulders, he felt his eyes fill with tears he hadn’t shed in years. Or rather had never shed, since this genuinely seemed to be the past in some way.

“Sweetheart?” Her questioning voice guided him back to reality with her concern. He took a deep breath and skillfully shoved the feeling growing in his heart down tightly. He released her and looked at her. Really looked. 

She exuded beauty and refinement, but with the experience of years, he could now sense the stress and frustration in her. Tony had inherited many things from Howard Stark, but his philanthropic nature was purely Maria Stark. Howard Stark was too focused on actually saving the world to take the time to help others do it.

“I missed you, Mother.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> PLease please please comment!
> 
> I'm writing this all the way to the movies and beyond and I want to hear who you want to see


	3. Best Way Out is Always Through

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tony knows that if his parents leave, they will meet the Winter Soldier. He knows. So what does he do?
> 
> Len says one steady pull more ought to do it.  
He says the best way out is always through.  
And I agree to that, or in so far  
As that I can see no way out but through

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please tell me what you think! I love comments!!

Tony nearly leaped out of his skin when the door opened abruptly two hours later to see Howard storming in. His memory in BARF had softened the man and now as he watched the hand grip the door handle in surprise, he remembered the edges that he always cut himself on. This he’d inherited from Howard as well.

“Well, I wondered when you’d get here. Maria, we need to make a stop before we go.” Howard ignored Maria’s slight slump of her shoulders to glare at his son. Tony bristled, but bit back the first words that sprung to mind. He was actually 48, not 21. He certainly did not need this man’s approval!

“Could you stay?” Both parents looked at him in cynical curiosity, which he had to agree was earned. “I mean, I just got home, maybe we could vacation together after the Christmas party?”

Tony gritted his teeth as Howard’s face darkened. Maria’s lips pursed before rising, “Now dear, we will be back in a few days. Your father has been planning this trip for weeks.”

“The stop included?” Tony hadn’t been able to stop the words spat from his mouth. He saw Howard’s face twist as Maria bite her lip. 

“Dear, don’t make this into a fight.” 

Tony fisted his hands to distract himself from the ever darkening face behind him. “Are you so eager to spend the next few days in DC? Enjoy the canteen?”

The words were said to Maria, but directed at Howard. Too late, Tony saw her face falter slightly. Tony felt a wave of cold wash through him. He was treating her just like Howard did, second to anything and everything else. She truly deserved better.

He didn’t get a chance to speak as Howard overrode him, “Maybe you could stop spending your time with all those  _ people  _ and start spending some of it here then. Being productive!”

“Dear, he’s been studying abroad for four months.” Maria always mediated these exchanges. Tony could see her shoulders sag as the two stubborn men went after each other’s jugulars again.

“Yeah, I know. Which broad this time. Do you even remember her name, Tony?” Howard’s words were so derisive, Tony saw red for a moment.

“Candace and she’s a great dancer. You should see what she can do with her hips!” He was in Howard’s face now. Howard’s glare increased as he scoffed and stormed out of the room and down the hall with Tony on his heels.

“Yes, a great future for Stark Industries, I see it now!” Howard waved sharply at a driver. “Much like whats-her-name, Sunrise?” 

Tony winced. Sunset Bain had been a mistake that he’d paid for dearly, both as part of SI and in the eyes of his father and the board. But fuck it, he’d barely been 18 years old.

“Maybe I’d rather be around them than Stark Industries!”

Now they were almost shouting over the hood of the car. Maria had directed the suitcases into the backseat, leaving the trunk untouched. 

“You’ll never be head of Stark Industries with this attitude! I’d rather leave everything to Obadiah than watch you squander it!” Howard's jab hurt. More than hurt, Tony felt part of him break. Obie was his godfather and in this time the entire family trusted him with everything. But Tony could remember the look on his face when he was slowly killing Tony. He jumped in the car as his father started the engine.

“Squander? Like you? You make weapons! You make things that kill people!”

“Antonio!” Maria’s sharp retort cut him off even as they sat in the idling car. 

Tony blew out a breath and huffed as he slumped back against the seat. He took a few deep breaths to calm down. Bloody hell, Rhodey had always said nothing could get under your skin like your family! He remembered the first press release after Afghanistan. Tempering his voice a bit and trying for a middle ground.

“Why do we still make weapons as our main product? War’s over, right?” He let some whine enter his voice. It would appease his mother, even if he didn’t think it would do anything to Howard. He saw Howard’s eyes meet his in the mirror.

“I build them to protect the soldiers.”

Tony snorted. With Obie in the reins, fat lot of good that did.

Howard heard him though and growled as he put the car into gear. “We need to leave, get out!”

Tony glared at his father and crossed his arms. He couldn’t think of a way to stop the trip, but maybe he could stop Barnes. He’d learned the fucking magic words, hopefully they’d be the same in this time as in 2016. He just had to get to the man.

The drive was silent except for Howard’s muttering. Tony had pulled out his notepad again. He glanced at his father, but they were nowhere near the right road yet, so he had some time. It took 30 minutes to get there from the mansion. Tony should know, he’d driven it a dozen times trying to show his dead father how to do it without crashing. Even while drunk, which Howard was not.

Now that he was back, he remembered how much Howard adored his mother. He’d never have driven drunk with her in the car. And Maria had her own way for coaxing him into things. 

The thought was barely formed when the car lurched. The last thing Tony thought before the screech took away reality was that he couldn’t lose them again.

* * *

The sounds were blurry and the shapes were quiet. Or maybe the other way around. He wasn’t sure.

“Barnes?”

He heard his father’s confused voice. Barnes? The Winter Soldier! Shit!

Once, Tony had forced himself to stand under the onslaught of ten alien to save Manhattan. This was more important. He forced everything, the pain, the confusion, everything to the back of his head. He looked up as the dark figure opened his mother’s door. His door had not survived the crash. Tony was lucky he’d worn a seatbelt or he may not have been in better shape.

He shoved all his energy into his legs and lunged at Barnes. This night wasn’t getting his mother! Not this time! He jumped on the strong back like a monkey, pulling all he could remember from training with Steve. His muscles felt all wrong, lacking both training and memory, but Tony’s brain was his asset.

He wrapped his arms around Barnes’s neck and shoulder, which conveniently placed his mouth right next to the assassin’s ear.

“Дождь” “ржавый” 

He’d learned Russian as a younger man for business reasons. Natasha had helped him brush up on it when they lived together.

“Семнадцатая” “Рассветная” “печь” 

Barnes threw him clear and was now marching up to him. Tony rolled to one side and latched on again. Clint had told him his persistence was one of his better traits in this type of fight.

“Девять” “добросердечных” 

Barnes’s arm made an annoyed sound when Tony banged at it with the piece of car he’d grabbed.

“Возвращение” “домой” 

Barnes finally got a hand hold on his hair and tore him to the front. Tony found himself kneeling in front of the assassin as a long blade came out. Tony could hear his mother crying out behind Barnes, but he met the blank grey eyes and smiled.

“Грузовой вагон”

Barnes froze, tip of the knife only a centimeter from Tony’s chest. That could have been worse. Tony had known it was all in, either the words worked, or he was about to die. He heard a low voice speak.

“Я жду приказаний ”

_ ‘Asset?’, Jesus _ , Tony had forgotten how creepy he found this version of Barnes. At least when they fought in Siberia, Barnes saw him. This sounded less sentient than JARVIS during his initial boot up.

Tony felt darkness encroaching on his sight. He didn’t have a lot of useful consciousness left.

“Okay, I’m gonna pass out and I hope you understand English because Russian is not my strong suit with a concussion. Cover your tracks with the authorities, don’t hurt my parents, call 911 for the crash, destroy all other evidence. Make sure your handlers won’t come after you and bring all data you can about your...program.” 

Tony gulped, he hoped he hadn’t missed anything.

“Find me when you are done and we are both alone and no one will notice you.” That sounded like he’d cover all bases. He wasn’t sure, the world was looking distinctly fuzzy.

“Understood. Soldier will comply.”

_ Oh good. Glad we got that done. Time for Tony to go night night. _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, I pulled the words off MCU's page. These words seems like something Tony would want to know later, after everything. If only to be able to stop the Winter Soldier if he's ever triggered again.
> 
> I'm trying for a more balance Howard. What do you guys think?


	4. But the Hand was Already Gone

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Howard is gone. Tony survived. Maybe he couldn't have changed that?
> 
> He saw all spoiled. ‘Don’t let him cut my hand off—  
The doctor, when he comes. Don’t let him, sister!’  
So. But the hand was gone already.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There is NO dismemberment. Just letting you know since the title and summary are kind of dark in that sense.

High pitched beeping woke him. Automatically, he slogged his way towards consciousness. The perpetual exhaustion, always tries to drag him back down, but he knows better. If he’s in medical, something big happened and they’d need him. As he shoved himself awake, he struggles to figure out how he’d ended up in medical this time. He hated medical! Maybe he could talk Bruce into signing him out.

His eyes fluttered open and he nearly jumped out of his skin. He opened his eyes to find Obidiah Stane leaning over him. He had nightmares about this, where Stane is back, reaching for his heart to yank out again. To go after his family again. Stane reaches out, likely to touch his shoulder, and that was enough to send him flying backwards off the bed. 

“Tones!”

“Tony!”

“Woah, easy there!”

Dark hands picked him off the floor as he remembered, 1991,  _ right _ . He felt as coordinated as a new fawn, all limbs and elbows. Thankfully, Rhodey had been manhandling him for years, even in 1991. He’ll need that familiarity until he gets his wits about him. Jeez, Obie would give him a heart attack like this.  _ Christ on a stick _ !

He looked at Rhodey and gripped his hand tightly. He knew the message that would be shining out of his eyes as his best friend wrapped an arm around his shoulders. Rhodey would protect him, of that he had no doubt, whatsoever. Rhodey always helped hold him up when something shook him to his core. Which was good because the room was spinning about him.

“Rhodey…” Tony’s whine was quiet, but his Rhodey-bear heard him.

“Easy, Tony. I got you. You’re safe here. Come on, back in bed before the nice Doctors come in an bitch at us.” Rhodey helped Tony into the bed with soft linens. He liked that. Soft linens were good. Tony tried to command linearity out of his thoughts, but they seemed splintered as glass fallen onto stone.

“Welcome back my boy.” Stane’s words earned him a glare. Tony never wanted to hear anybody call him ‘ _ my boy’  _ again. The term disgusted him. He thought those words should shrivel even the slimiest of tongues. Ugh, he only got this poetic with a concussion, Tony curled towards Rhodey, whimpering. Then his memories of the crash came back to him. His argument with Howard, the screech of tires, flashed through his mind. A lump grew in his thoughts, at Howard’s final plea to help his wife and son. A plea to Barnes to remember. The panic that clawed Tony out of his dazed fog, when he realized his mother was about to be murdered, flooded him again and he found himself instinctively looking at Rhodey.

“Mother? Howard?” Rhodey’s sad eyes broke his heart. Tony could stop himself. “No...please no…. Please, Rhodey.” He couldn’t catch the bottom of his throat as it felt like it dropped suddenly through his stomach.

Rhodey held him close, burying his head in the strong shoulder. “Your mother’s here. She’s still unconscious. She could go either way, but Howard... I’m sorry man.”

Tony felt his entire frame shake as he grasped desperately at Rhodey’s shirt. He’d tried so hard to protect them. He’d failed them again. He’d failed.

“I tr-tried. I-I-” Tony stuttered, but it was of no use. When had trying ever been good enough? Tony felt Rhodey climb onto the bed and rock him back and forth.

“I know man. I know.” Rhodey said quietly in one ear.

Obie patted his shoulder, but Tony shuddered and drew away. That hand! It felt like a frozen blade on his tongue. No pain at first, just blood, until the ice melts. By then the tongue’s gone. Rhodey must have noticed Tony utter revulsion because he spoke to Obie next, wrapping a protective arm around Tony tightly.

“Look, I’ll keep an eye on him. Could you see about finding a doctor and getting an update?”

Tony didn’t see the man exit, but he heard the squeak and whoosh of a door. The hallway sounds which appeared only briefly left the room in silence again. He felt Rhodey rock him again, running fingers through his hair. This feeling trickled down his spine, grounding him in ways he never understood. He could remember when Rhodey used to do this, when Tony was upset about a coding problem. Before Tony had ruined the best friendship he’d ever had. That he had yet to ruin. It was all so confusing, whirling together in a bright garish collage of colors. Movie nights and homework melted with casinos and public parties creating a mish-mash of a friendship that alternatively supported as it pulled the rug out from under itself. He sniffed and gripped Rhodey’s shirt tightly.

“Jarvis?” Tony didn’t know who else would be able to help. At first he’d thought of FRIDAY or even JARVIS, but they didn’t exist yet. In this time the family used Stane as a backup for most official purposes. Jarvis may have meant a lot to Tony, but his parents hadn’t seen the man that way.

“On his way. He’s taking the time to replace at least your identification and your mom’s.” Tony must have made some noise of confusion because Rhodey explained further. “The car took everything man.”

That startled Tony out of the state of dazed confusion where thought traveled miles in a second in the wrong way before correcting course. “Wait. What?” Tony stared at him in confusion now. The car went somewhere?

“Yeah, shit, you were lucky you were thrown clear. So was your mom. The car went up in flames. That’s how the ambulance even found you guys. Someone saw the flames.” Rhodey gave him a very shaky grin at his amazed stare. What flames? When did the car go up in flames? He remembered the car being perfectly smashed and flame-less. Rhodey misinterpreted his confusion, “Yeah, Obie looked pretty white, well more than normal anyway.”

Normally, that would have drawn a smile from Tony, but not today. He struggled to sit upright. “Mother?” Rhodey helped him sit up more but ultimately doing little but settling them further against the headboard. “Where is Mother? You said she’s here? She’s alive?” Tony grimaced as the world spun around him. Maybe he shouldn’t be upright yet anyway. 

“Slow down, Tones.”Rhodey soothed. “Obie went to check on her and...this is likely your doctor.” Rhodey pulled away slightly and Tony saw a grey-haired gentleman with a large file frowning at the pair on the bed. Tony whimpered and pulled Rhodey back in. He wasn’t ready to stand on his own quite yet.

“Mr Stark, I’d like to give you your prognosis and give you a short exam. Perhaps your friend could wait outside.” Tony hated the subtle command in that voice. Why did people think that if you suggest something, its somehow a better option than it was before? Stane was good at that, sneaking in ‘suggestions’ and Tony had grown to rebel against the whole idea years ago. Looking back, Stane had probably done that a little on purpose. Stane’s ‘suggestions’ had gotten sneakier and Tony had rejected all other friendship overtures the second such a tactic was used.

Tony glanced at the older man in the lab coat. This man wasn’t very comforting. It didn’t help that he looked nothing like Bruce. Wow, Tony must have really knocked his head hard to be thinking of Bruce as comforting after everything. Forcibly, he directed his own thoughts to the here and now. He had a Doctor to deal with. Stubbornly, he gripped Rhodey. Even at his worst, he knew Rhodey was safe. It was the one constant in this whole messed up reality.

“He stays. Go ahead.” Tony’s set face must have been very convincing, because the doctor simply nodded. Tony didn’t relax though. He’d learned that some simply waited for you to relax before trying their suggestion disguised a different way. For the moment at least, the doctor stopped talking about sending Rhodey somewhere else. A smart choice.

“You have a moderate concussion and severe dehydration and blood loss. Over the next few days-”

“What-a-minute!” Rhodey interrupted the Doctor, “I thought being unconscious qualified this as a severe concussion?” Tony felt Rhodey’s hands twitch where they held his shoulders. His Rhodey-bear was in full Mama Bear protective mode today. He must look really upset.

The Doctor grimaced. With a quick glance at Tony for approval, which he gave with a curt nod, the doctor elaborated. “It is our opinion that Mr Stark’s loss of consciousness was due to the combination of his blood loss and withdrawal. Your blood work, young man, is quite frankly a mess.”

Tony winced. That was a fair jab. He’d escaped being addicted to anything until after Jarvis’s death the first time, but the European trip was likely drug-filled and responsibility-free. After Sunset Bain, Tony had decided, rather haphazardly, to brush off the idea of running the company someday. Why bother, since his old man would live forever. Jarvis had called it ‘cuttin off your nose to spite your face’. Still, even against Jarvis’ pleas, he’d dove straight into the scene, especially when Rhodey went Ari Force full-time. He didn’t think he’d know what he had been taking even without the 27 year mental download he was still struggling through. Fuck, he missed JARVIS.

“Can you tell me some of what we’re fighting? How long? How much? We are not certain what reactions you are currently having are due to the change in blood and what is due to the let down of neurotransmitters.” This was when the doctor finally became comforting to Tony. There was no censure in his tone, just curiosity. He’d worked with Bruce and Cho enough to know the difference. The Doctor simply wanted information.

Tony had to admit, it took guts to ask. Especially with the growling Rhodey was now doing. Not many would dare offend Captain Rhodes in protective mode. “Man, he just lost his father. Lay off him!”

The doctor held up his hand, “I’m not casting stones. I’m trying to treat my patient.” This didn’t seem to settle Rhodey much. Regardless, the doctor turned to Tony again, “ Mr Stark?”

Tony glanced at Rhodey, knowing neither of them would like what little Tony could say. “I’ve been traveling the last four months. Lots of booze definitely, but the others.” Tony was forced to shrug and then winced as that pulled something on his collarbone. He hadn’t gotten a list of his injuries yet, what with his sidetrack on his head taking up space. His collarbone would be one of those annoying injuries though. “There  _ was  _ stuff, but I couldn’t tell you what, or how much. Only that I’ve been pretty clean since hitting the US.”

“Clean?”

“Really?”

The Doctor’s skeptical look was ignored for Rhodey’s surprised one. The captain even pulled back a little to look Tony in the eye. Tony glanced at him before looking down where he was fiddling with his fingers.. Rhodey had been so supportive this last hour, Tony felt like he was ruining them all over again. He didn’t want that kind of failure.

“Tones, nothing? Not even booze? Not since I picked you up on Saturday?” Tony felt a burst of gratitude when Rhodey’s question held no disbelief, only questing. Especially since the man knew this body had a drink the night before he returned.

“Aside from a drink last night…” As Tony shook his head gingerly, that reminded him, “By the way, what day  _ is _ today?”

“It is Wednesday, December 18th.” The doctor answered, writing a notation in his paperwork. He’d gotten his answer. 

Rhodey cuddled Tony back close again as he grinned faintly, “Yeah, you missed yesterday completely. It’s okay, nothing earth shattering happened without you.” Rhodey’s joke held his customary thread of concern, but before any of them could continue a knock at the door drew their attention.

Obie’s head poked in, “Tony, my boy. How are you doing?” Tony swallowed his initial scowl at the smarmy grin.

When the doctor went to open his mouth, Tony overrode him. Obie may have Medical Permission on file at this point, being Tony’s godfather. He’d have to change that. He had a lot of work ahead of him to extricate Stane from his life, and that of his mother. “I’ll be fine. Concussion, you know the drill with a car crash. How’s Mother?”

Stane, as well as Rhodey, had a raised eyebrow at his interruption. Both knew him well enough to have noticed his sudden and complete dislike of Stane. For the moment,Stan decided to let it slide, like he usually did with Tony’s chaotic behavior, But that wouldn’t hold long. “Maria is out of danger and recovering. I’ve arranged to move her to this room this afternoon if she keeps on the mend.”

Stane seemed to hesitate here, Tony noticed an odd look in his eye. Almost like a protective look, but deeper, darker. Like he was protecting a prized possession than a person. That was what Tony was to Stane, a possession. His  _ Golden Egg. _ “The police want a statement from you, my boy. I’ve been keeping them back, but they really want to close this report, not to mention the board and the press. I’ll handle it once you’ve signed the official report.”

It was so close to what Obie had done the first time. Swamped with grief and probably enough booze to float the navy, Tony relinquished control to the man the first time around. He hadn’t been in the hospital and Rhodey had been in a cabin with some air force friends. Jarvis hadn’t gotten a hold of Rhodey until he re-emerged to visit his parents for Christmas itself. As such, Tony had been left with Stane, alone. Eventually Jarvis had returned, but by then Tony had already dumped everything in Stane’s lap and gotten his mail forwarded to the altered dimension he found himself at home in during his drugged state. The funeral had been a media storm and Tony hadn’t handled it well. The press had bombarded him with questions that a sober adult would have found intimidating, let alone a barely coherent twenty-one year old. Now, after helping Peter through some of his teenage drama, Tony had to wonder if it had been orchestrated to overwhelm him.

During the funeral, several of Howard’s friends had tried to step up and take the media mess. But Tony had snapped at them hard. All the pain and anger and fear roiled in him, lashed bleeding scars in anyone trying to reach out. He’d lost many friends that day, or his family had at least. Stane had smoothed some of them, the business friends. Ones that SI needed. But Tony had never connected to the others again. Only Jarvis and Rhodey had stuck it out.

Not this time. This time, he’d grieve in private. In public, he’d be in control. And Stane wouldn’t get his way this time.

Tony quickly dragged up some emotional armor to sound grateful to the family friend, “Thanks, Obie. Send the cops in next chance you get. Let the board know, I’ll talk with them on…” Tony mentally shuffled his memory for the week’s actual tasks, “Monday.” That would give him enough time to talk with the school and get out of the hospital. 

Stane nodded and settled himself into the chair in the corner, much to Tony’s annoyance. He finally chose to ignore him and get into an engineering debate with Rhodey. The Doctor had taken the hint from both boys and removed himself before they could talk further. Tony hoped the same doctor would come by after Stane left. He didn’t want to break in another doctor.

Tony was relieved that his mother’s arrival that afternoon meant Stane was returning to the office to “deal with work, not to worry my boy, I’ll take care of everything.” Tony shuddered. How the hell hadn’t noticed how creepy Stane behaved?

It did mean the doctor returned. The brief exam, which included a list of injuries, settled some of his questions. The collarbone was by far the most annoying injury. He could work with the concussion and the ribs weren’t even worth a mention.

Rhodey stayed with Tony until they kicked him out at 9. He left a notepad, pencil and a promise to be back in the morning with something less tortious than hospital food. He obviously could tell Tony was starting to plan is great hospital escape. To appease the doctors and be near his mother Tony distracted himself for several hours, divided between making notes about the future and watching his mother’s breathing. 

She was still breathing in the morning.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So what do you think of 21-year-old Tony?


	5. The woods are lovely, dark and deep?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The family recovers and comes to terms with loss
> 
> The woods are lovely, dark and deep,  
But I have promises to keep,  
And miles to go before I sleep

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a day late because I've been going 10 days for crazy!!!! Tomorrow is my first real break. YES!!!!!!

Maria Stark left the hospital Christmas Eve. Tony visited everyday. He did visit the board on the 23rd as promised. His presence was met with a mixture of relief and skepticism. Tony wondered is it was too paranoid to think Stane may have started turning them against Tony before he even got out of hte hospital. He didn’t recognize every member in front of him, but he was recognized enough. Many had retired by the time Tony handed the lot of them over to Pepper. Some had retired before his Afghani vacation, when he didn’t care enough about them to really remember them much. He had JARVIS for that. Regardless, they were going to follow his lead with the company or get dragged along behind it like recalcitrant puppies. He refused to waste time with them. But that was an agenda for another day. This meeting was to assure them that he was alive, his mother was alive, his father was not and he wasn’t abandoning the company.

He requested they hold a meeting right after the New Year and to please leave the family alone until then. Of course, that resulted in a lot of outbursts, but Tony felt he handled that was aplomb. The family was grieving, he was grieving. They could afford to give him 10 days. That meeting preceded a press release where he said almost the same thing, without the details. Some of the board followed him to the release and stood behind him in solidarity, Stane included. It felt wrong to have the man at his back, but Tony’s been in the spotlight enough to handle that well. The hand on his shoulder reminded him fiercely of the Firefighter’s gala when Stane explained that he’d cut Tony out of the company. Still the press release contained the bare facts of the accident and none of the details.

Details he had told the officer at the hospital. How they were arguing and then they were crashing. He said he remembered a figure, but that was it. His confusion shone through truthfully, and was backed by the medical record. His concussion gave him an out for the foggy memory. None of them knew he’d been in active battle with a similar concussion before. He knew how to function in all sorts of deplorable conditions. It was the first time he remembered that he’d told Barnes to contact him eventually and briefly wondered where the assassin was. The concern was tabled until his life was less tornado and more spin cycle at the very least. Maria had said something rather similar and the officers filed it as an accident out of respect. Tony could tell they wanted to call it Drunk Driving by Howard, like the first time. And also like the first time, they’d buried the idea to protect Tony and SI.

It wasn’t until Christmas morning that Tony found out that Maria’s memory wasn’t as foggy as she let on. Jarvis had decorated the mansion and Ana had made a wonderful breakfast as Tony and Maria sat by the tree to open family gifts before deciding what to do with their evening. Tony had cancelled all the parties planned for the holidays, much to Maria’s consternation. Normally, They’d host an SI party, a business relations party, and at least two foundation parties. That was in addition to attending any or all of a dozen other gaudy, swirling events geared for the rich and well-connected. Maria tried to argue the benefits of the parties But Tony stayed firm on that. If he’d learned anything after “Civil War” incident, it was to take time to grieve.

Maria sat enveloped by blankets Ana had arranged following their breakfast. Maria had finally shooed her to join her husband for some Christmas cheer, Maria wanted time with her son. She’d been almost frail the last few days unless her attention was needed. Howard’s affairs were to be settled after the new year, but she’d arranged the funeral and services, along with tracking Howard’s body and ensuring it got sent to the proper mortuary. Each time someone approached her with a question or problem, Tony saw her square her shoulders and stand up tall and be the wife of Howard Stark. But when everyone left the room and she was staring out the window or at the fireplace, Tony saw her shoulders drop with the weight of being a widow. Her glassy eyes spoke of tears she’d not let fall, a state Tony thoroughly understood. So now, on Christmas, TOny was taking the time to be with his mother, that maybe they both could let go a little. 

Tony had placed a small wrapped gift on her lap and took one for himself before settling ont he couch. It wasn’t cuddling, per say, Maria was too dignified for that, but it was more cozy than Tony remembered being for a long time. He was pretty sure either Maria or Jarvis had picked out all the gifts under the tree save the one small gift from Howard to Maria. Tony had found it on his father’s desk, already wrapped. He had debated endlessly about giving it to her. It represented a lot. To Tony, it meant his father had, in fact, planned to spend at least part of Christmas at home with Tony. But it could be more than that to Maria. It was the last gift Howard would ever give her and Tony worried about what she would do if it fell short in some way.

But Maria didn’t make any attempt to unwrap the gift, she just sat there with it in her lap. Tony placed his own on the table in front of her and settled next to her again on the sofa. He placed his hands on hers.

“Mother?”

She looked at him. He’d never seen her actually cry, for all he knew what she looked like when upset. Her glassy eyes seemed to beg at him for something. His uncertainty held him back. He couldn’t remember the last time his mother had comforted him. Her hands trembled a moment before coming up, one to cover her mouth and one to grip his sleeve. Finally, he gathered her in his arms and held her tightly as he felt sharp sobs fracture her perfect posture. She didn’t speak for the longest time as Tony slowly rocked them back and forth, ignoring the growing wet on his shoulder. Even Pepper had never trusted him, needed him like this. This quiet, utter destruction of all attempts to command a normal personality shattered all barriers society imprinted on its population, allowing for connections thought long lost and forgotten. Tony felt the overwhelming urge to hold his mother closer, to wrap her in gold titanium arms and keep her protected and close within his heart. As he pressed his face to her precise coiffure, the image of a well-composed woman dissolved back into the mother he always remembered from his childhood.

As time continued, Tony saw Jarvis and Ana each look in on them and back out quietly, leaving the family to their own healing. Tony knew that when they were ready, both would be there, steady rocks upon which to anchor themselves in the chaos of life. So he let them go about their day and he focused his energies on his calming mother. When she seemed calmer, he squeezed her a moment before loosening his hold to see if she wanted eye contact.

“Antonio…” She whispered so softly, it barely caught his attention. He stopped his rocking motion and waited, “Are you hurt?”

Tony blinked and pulled back enough to look at her. That wasn’t remotely what he thought was running through her mind. Though since his thoughts had been focused on her, maybe it isn’t a great stretch. She brushed her hand down his cheek and across a shoulder before using the other hand to run through his hair and down the other side, clearly checking for an injury, though why now and not a week ago, he couldn’t say.

“I’m fine, Mother. Remember? Doctor Messor kept me in the hospital until I was okay.” Longer than, if Tony’s opinion counted for something. Apparently even in this time, his opinion about his own health was considered biased.

She shook her head. “N-no. Before? Did- did he do anything?”

Now Tony was stumped. “He? Before?” He couldn’t remember anything else around this time his mother would be asking about. He’d spent most of the semester in Europe, but while there had been a varied and extensive cavalcade of characters around him, none so important as he’d mentioned. The only significant ‘_ he’ _ s in Tony’s life were Stane, Rhodey and Jarvis. And his grad advisor after a fashion. His mother didn’t know about Stane’s proclivities yet and the idea of Rhodey or Jarvis hurting him was laughable. _ So who…? _

“The man. The one who tried t-to to-” Her hand went to her throat and suddenly he knew. His entire body froze in terror and pain at the distress it had likely caused her, was still causing her. She’d seen Barnes. She did remember.

“Mother?” He gently tried to move her hand but she gripped his shoulders. As if holding him here, in this moment, refusing to let him slip away and follow his father.

“I couldn’t get out of the car, but I-I saw. He had a knife. He was- was going to- was going t-to- He had you- you.” Tony engulfed her in his arms again as she stuttered. _ Shit _! He’d heard her during the fight but he’d thought she’d been simply been crying out in pain. He’d no idea she’d turned to look his way.

“I’m okay. I’m right here, _ Mammina _.” That caused a fresh wave of sobs, but he just held her now. This was a mother who’d almost lost her son. Tony had seen that grief a few times since becoming Iron Man. He cradled his mother, hoping she could let it all out.

“I was so scared, _ Bambino _ . I saw you there and he had that- that knife and I thought I’d lose you! Oh _ Antonio, mia Bambino. Mia caro, Ti amo più di qualsiasi cosa _.” Maria’s voice gave way to sobs as she clutched her son in her arms. Tony felt tears come to his own eyes as she continued to babble in broken Italien. 

Tony closed his eyes. He hadn’t meant for any of this to happen. He’d wanted to spare them this death. Looked like he’d only half succeeded. But in doing so, he’d given his mother the gift of widowship. She had the death of her husband to mourn, the near death of her son to recover from. Tony knew she could do it. Maria Stark was a strong woman, but right now, she was a mother who needed her son. 

Eventually, Maria composed herself as the control Tony had always admired, and resented in turns, showed itself. She sniffed, reaching for the tissue Ana had thoughtfully left on the table. Patting her face, Tony grinned slightly. He couldn’t help but find some small amusement in his mother’s fussy attempt to preserve her make-up. Unfortunately, very little had survived the emotional display. Still, it helped Maria compose herself a bit and she sat back far enough that she could at least look him in the eye.

“You know what happened, don’t you.” It was more than a question but less than a statement. Maria’s gaze was calculating and Tony remembered that Maria’s power had been of her own as well as Howard’s wife. Also, as the wife of a rather less than ideal communicator, she’d learned to deduce information from dreadfully little data as to the minds of her husband and son.

“I know some of it.” 

She sighed and ran a hand over his cheek. “You tried to get us to stay, you knew this would happen in some way.” Tony swallowed at the guilt, both in his own stomach and in her voice. He’d tried to save them both. Over the last few days, Tony had steadfastly refused to even think the thought, _ If only they’d listened to me _. But his mother obviously had it running around her head already. “Was it because of the package?” 

Tony frowned in concentration. He’d already decided to avoid a full explanation until he tracked the hit order to a trigger puller. But, _ what package _ ? The thing Barnes got out of the trunk in the first timeline? He never learned what it contained. He’d assumed Howard’s death was the end in and of itself. _ But maybe…? _

“I- I don’t know yet. But I will. I will find out, _ Mama _. I promise. I knew ‘soon’. That was all I knew.” Tony cradled his mother closer. He knew he’d protect her. As much as he tried to protect Pepper and the world in the future, he’d protect her.

“I understand.” They stayed like that a moment before she pulled back to once again meet his eyes. He let her, hoping that by letting her call the shots right now she could work her way through everything. “Listen to me, _ Bambino _ . I want to know. I do! But you must also promise me. Don’t make your life about this. Don’t spend all of yourself on his death. Don’t waste your life, _ Antonio. _” 

Tony froze. Those same words. Spoken by Yinsen in a godforsaken cave in 18 years, now exiting his mother’s mouth. He wouldn’t forget them. Either of them.

“I won’t.” He waited a few minutes, organizing his thoughts. “I want to finish my Master’s at least before taking over SI.” he said firmly.

She sighed. “I’d hoped you’d finish your doctoral at least before your father drew you into his world. I suppose it is less likely now. But you could try, Tony. Obadiah would help, you know.”

Tony tensed. That, he could not do. Stane was a bogeyman that still haunted his nightmares. He desperately shoved that down, hoping he’d his it well. Maria looked at him shrewdly.

“What is it?”

Tony gritted his teeth before running a hand through his hair. He didn’t mind telling his mother, it was necessary for one thing. She was an amazing asset in this battle with Stane he was starting. She was also a glaring weakness for Tony that needed to be alerted. Still, he’d need to get his reactions under better control before being in public, or worse in front of the man himself. Stane knew Tony way too well. 

“I don’t trust him.” At his declaration, her eyes widened in surprise and then narrowed in worry. He continued, “Mother, please. I just don’t. Promise me you will be very careful around him.”

She was silent for some time. He wasn’t sure what she was thinking. Hopefully it was about helping him. She took a deep breath. “I think you need to tell me who we do trust.”

Tony bit his lip. He had to remember that certain events created loyalty and some of them hadn’t happened yet. But there were some that had. Some loyalty was in the bones. He knew it.

“Ana and Jarvis, always. I trust Aunt Peggy and Aunt Angie.” Not that he knew them very well in this timeline. Not for a few years. He hadn’t even seen the Howlies since he was very little. He’d have to change that.

“I trust Rhodey. I trust Rhodey’s family. But not Sta- Obadiah Stane. Never again, Mother.” His firm answer had her eyes deepen with circumspection. Tony’s mechanical brain certainly came from Howard, but his sense of strategy came from her. He’d forgotten that. He’d forgotten how much she’d helped his father in the social aspects of the business. Howard could work a crowd, but he was terrible at being part of one. It was how he’d earned his reputation as a show off. He never learned to talk with, just at someone. Maria Stark smoothed over those wrinkles. Tony had seen it time and again, especially at parties where his father would put in an appearance very briefly, present something awesome, say a few scripted phrases to several people and have one conversation which his mother would drew the man from. Maria gracefully covered all that jagged edge and made way for SI in so many respects, that the only reason Tony suspected she wasn’t CEO like Pepper was the stupid gender bias.

“Okay, okay, so we need to do that carefully. Obadiah controls a large amount of the company.” Maria’s concerned voice spoke with authority. Tony nodded, mentally switching gears a bit.

“I haven’t checked yet, but I assume that either you or I or some combination inherited father’s interest in the company. I know Obadiah controls a large percentage of the board.”

“Yes,” Maria was nodding, “If we’re removing him, we’d need to do it very carefully, but Tony, are you certain?”

Tony closed his eyes and thought about the look of glee on the familiar face as Obadiah paralyzed him to experience a slow, suffocating death. The talk about how his ideas didn’t belong to him. How his father’s ideas didn’t belong to his father. How Tony was never supposed to leave that desert. How Stane had played good uncle and kind godfather for almost 20 years before torturing and killing his prey. All for another golden egg.

“Yes mother. I’m not going to be his goose to lay a golden egg. Never again.”

* * *

Tony and Maria spent the New Years with Rhodey’s family. Jarvis and Ana were welcomed heartily as well. Nana Rhodes, whom Tony had always liked, had taken Maria under her wing the second she walked through the door. Tony had a fond, and amused, memory of when he walked in as a scrawny 14 year old and Nana Rhodes deciding he was too skinny. Rhodey had no mercy in leaving Tony in her clutches as she forced pie after pie upon him with the excuse that she was testing minor changes in recipes. Nana Rhodes believed everything got better with pie. Rhodey’s Aunt was the best person to cheer up his mother. Mama Rhodes had swooped in a moment later to cuddle Tony. Her hugs were still as he remembered them. The kind you sank into. She also eyed him shrewdly and whispered in his ear that anytime he needed a break from those vultures to let her ‘Jimmy’ know and he could hide out here. Tony smothered a wet laugh. Both at Rhodey being called ‘Jimmy’ and at the welcome he felt. Last time he’d felt so alone. He hadn’t come back here for years because he was worried about being the awkward pity case. Instead, his entire family was embraced by the Rhodes clan. Jarvis and Rhodey’s father got into a long discussion about the roads while Ana helped Rhodey’s sister collect dinner. Tony looked on with such happiness, once he’d extracted himself from the greetings, that he had to check that his heart wasn’t glowing even without the reactor.

As the evening continued, Rhodey’s sister introduced her fiance and Nana’s daughter arrived with her infant in tow. Normally, wine would pass around, but Tony saw it was limited to some bubbly saved for the midnight toast. Tony, and by extension Rhodey, had been sober and dry since the accident. The media had blamed Howard’s accident on his frequent forays into alcoholism, despite both Maria’s and Tony’s statements that Howard had not been drunk. A statement Tony only made for his mother’s sake since if Howard had been in his study he likely had downed at least one shot prior to leaving.

However, Tony firmly believed that Howard had not imbibed enough to be near drunk, or even tipsy. He was very careful to ask a driver for a lift when that was the case, especially with Maria in the car. No this accident was Barnes’ fault, and thus HYDRA’s fault, through and through.

Still, Tony had promised himself he’d get through at least the holidays sober. If only for his mother’s sake. Maria was taking her husband’s death hard. He smiled as Maria settled in to discuss her foundation. The Maria Stark Foundation, which had languished forgotten by SI for years between her death and Iron Man’s appearance, would continue strong now. Dedicated to helping women and minorities, Maria seemed to be excited about putting more of her weight behind it and less behind Howard’s SI projects. She would likely still support Tony, but he’d already requested that she separate herself a bit more from the business unless he needed her. It was part of his strategy.

Rhodey bumped his shoulder, drawing him from his thoughts, and gestured at the back door. Tony grabbed the coke he’d been nursing and followed his best friend on the covered porch. It took a few minutes to wipe wet leaves and mild frost off the sturdy chairs, but Tony and Rhodey had time and the blankets Rhodey had over his shoulder were dry and warm. They sat out of the wind a few minutes before Rhodey took a deep breath, “So you gonna fill me in or shall I start playing guessing games?”

Tony snorted. Which is a _ bad _idea when drinking pop. After the coughing fit and obligatory laughing fit that followed, he settled back on the softly carved bench. He looked out over the street. Rhodey had actually chosen the only place Tony would probably have trusted to speak like this. He’d found bugs in the mansion before his mother came home and they all accidentally got wet or smashed in some fit of rage or sorrow. When he was certain he’d gotten them all, he went to Jarvis for a second opinion. The man actually found another one in his father’s study. Tony had been careful not to actually destroy anything as he proceeded to throw things about the room in a sobbing frenzy. Jarvis said he and Ana were happy to clean up and take out the garbage for him afterwards.

Of course this meant he didn’t trust his apartment at MIT either and certainly not SI offices. So a cold porch in the middle of a slushy road in Philly.

“Rhodey, you remember that Trek episode, ‘_ Tomorrow is Yesterday _’?” 

Rhodey stared at him. Tony just waited. His Rhodey-Bear earned his engineering degree before the airforce sunk their teeth into him. Even in the future when he didn’t use it often enough, Rhodey retained the mental acuity that would put most actively working engineers to shame. It was part of why he was the SI liaison, not just his connection to Tony.

“So are you from the past or from the future in this scenario?” 

Tony grinned. He loved the way Rhodey always just let him explain stuff. Only asking question to keep up. “Why, Hunny-Bear, if I had been to the past, don’t you think history books would have something more interesting to say?”

Rhodey rolled his eyes. That was his Rhodey, taking everything Tony threw at him as it came. God, Tony missed him. This version lacked some of the desperation the Rhodey had gained over the years with regards to Tony. His 3 month vacation had thrown Rhodey for quite the loop. For months afterwards, Rhodey had seesawed dramatically between being overprotective and completely standoffish. It actually sometimes made Tony’s head hurt.

“Okay, future man, how far into the future and when did you arrive here...now?” Rhodey grinned at him, letting this all play out. Tony would bet Rhodey wouldn’t try to integrate anything Tony said until later. It was a tactic Rhodey often used since Tony’s brain sometimes jumped around a bit and it took time to put things in a comprehensible order. Besides, it was more fun this way, and Rhodey, at this point, was definitely always up for a good joke.

“Let’s say I got back just before you woke me up. On December 16th.”

The future-colonel froze. Tony could see the implications running through his head. His eyes deepened as how much this was not a joke at all sank in. He stared at Tony for several minutes before, “Your father died.”

Tony swallowed. He knew what Rhodey was asking. What happened last time, why that day? Was this any different? “They both did.”

Rhodey downed the drink in his hands like he wished it was hard liquor. Tony felt his hands shake for a drink, but he shoved that away. _ Not until after the holidays _, he told himself sternly. Rhodey was here. That was all the comfort he needed right now.

“I’m sorry, man.”

“You’ve already said that.”

“Not the same thing.”

“Yeah.”

They stared across the road. The night was clear, despite the slushy rain they’d been getting the last week. They didn’t need to talk more, their friendship had been built as much on what wasn’t said as what was. So they settled for a moment. Tony knew they’d talk more about this at some point, but right now, he was grateful his best friend was letting him assimilate his father’s death. Maybe there was no way to save Howard Stark. Maybe fate had dictated that for the stars to go on spinning the man must die now. Very little would have stopped the Winter Soldier and Tony wouldn’t have gotten close enough to the man without him going after a target. _ So maybe... _

Tony shook that thought off. He didn’t believe in that type of coincidence, in fate. He glanced over at Rhodey. The only person he had expected to really figure it out. Still...

“How’d you know?” 

Rhodey snorted. “You asked about my Mama’s sugar weenies. I know Mama thinks I told you, but I never said word one and we both know it. Mama’s bacon-wrapped sugary goodness is a fun surprise to any newcomer, I wouldn’t have spoiled it.”

Tony snorted. Of all things to slip up on, it showed that his best friend noticed something small like an appetizer. 

Figures

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay. Now that I've introduced Maria, what do you think of her?
> 
> The Star trek episode is from the original series since the newer series wouldn't be out quite yet.  
Also, Nana Rhodes is Rhodey's Aunt (and matriarch of the family) Mama Rhodes is her younger brother's wife and Rhodey's mother. Since I kind of threw a lot of that at you :)


	6. Reason is the Steering Gear

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Since Rhodey is his best friend, bringing him up to speed seems a logical step. But its more than logic.
> 
> All the time it’s what we’re most concerned with.  
There’s will as motor and there’s will as brakes.  
Reason is, I suppose, the steering gear.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> More Rhodey-Bear!!!!!

Tony huffed as he leaned against the wall next to Rhodey. His thesis committee had been in there for twenty minutes longer than they should have in his opinion. He had a lot to do. In the last two months, he’d managed to put some of his plans into the pipeline. Almost no one at SI was happy with him though. As discussed, his mother had used her grief to step back and out of much of SI, retaining only enough participation to make her interference on Tony’s behalf believable. Still, they were receiving a lot of push back.

At least they’d placated the board. Tony was head of R&D until his degree came in, then he would step forward. He would have to do a lot of work to gain control over the company. His father had split his shares of Stark Industries between his mother and himself, leaving neither of them with a clear majority, which was a real problem. Before, Tony owning the majority of shares helped him shove some of his decisions forward. Stane had also put his own considerable pressure behind the young inventor whenever Tony surfaced from the lab to promote a non-weapon invention. Tony suspected now, that support had been to prevent Tony from trying to actually run the company. It explained why some of his projects never made it off the ground when they were such good ideas, like the Intelli-crops. Still, Tony didn’t hold a clear majority in shares right now. The mere fact that he didn’t, even if his mother sided with him on things, meant he had to fight for every change he was making.

He had a whole list of things he wanted to do, the notebook had given way to a long roll of paper he carried folded in his pocket. He’d rewritten it in the same language he would some day encode JARVIS in, a proprietary language. Rhodey had come across it in January and simply sighed. Tony had forgotten that originally Rhodey had been determined to learn any computer language Tony learned so he could at least follow this kind of thing. It had taken two painstakingly long weeks to help Rhodey grasp the basics of the language and how he turned it into a more communicative version. In the end, Rhodey had a basic understanding and Tony had a minorly secretive way to communicate with his best friend, and the only other person to know of his time hopping.

That had been a big help. Tony had been absent-minded the first time in school when he was 21. With the additional memories taking up mental real estate, any commitments made prior to December 16th were summarily forgotten. Thus Rhodey, who’d always known his schedule anyway, had taken over getting Tony to the right place at the right time. At least until the Air Force planned to steal him in May. 

He’d also poked and prodded Tony until the not-21-year-old had actually finished his darn thesis. Then Rhodey had read it and helped him proof it. He doubted he would be here without his Rhodey-bear.

Rhodey grinned at him. Both of them knew this was in the bag. Tony and his adviser had reviewed the whole thing last month. Rhodey had dragged Tony out of his lab early this morning to make sure the genius was dressed and presentable for this. His mother was coming later that day to celebrate with dinner. Tony and Rhodey were going to spend Spring Break with her at the New York mansion. 

It seemed the ideal solution, to have Rhodey and him a week to themselves to talk. The last few months had been complicated. He had been putting off Rhodey’s curiosity, asking him to wait until Tony was no longer worrying about his degree. Rhodey had agreed, likely due to the sheer exhaustion present on Tony’s face. In January, the board had all but demanded a decision for either Tony to step up or step aside for Stane. Even Stane argued with them on this, but Tony hadn’t wanted to be beholden to the man and likely not been helping the man’s case. 

This was further exacerbated by Tony having a hard time tamping down on his reactions. At times, he felt like he was crawling out of his skin and other times, he felt like he was on top of the world. The dichotomy was dizzying. He was also fascinated to note that he was actually less flexible and more sensitive to pain than before. At first he wondered if it was due to the utter lack of drugs in his system. Eventually he located a medical student he remembered from before as a good doctor, a Curt Conners. The man was entering the military as a surgeon, but he was a researcher at heart and Tony had a great time talking with him. The man also explained the physiological differences between your 20s, 30s and 40s, luckily without much prompting.

Tony’s body had lost a lot of its bone resiliency during his backward fling. He needed to be on the lookout for a good gym time and partner while he was still young. Additionally, his inventing spree while on drugs made more sense as the testosterone surges not only affected his libido but also his mental acuity and plasticity, increasing both. Similarly, he found the manic energy with which he’d always battled had returned and increased with a vengeance. And while he was grateful for the bump in raw IQ, he often found himself requiring a firm self-talk session. ‘Stop, take a breath and logic it out again’ became his mantra. This impulse control change was perhaps the hardest for him to swallow with his memory of just how may lives his poor decisions had cost.

But he had a chance to change that. He just had to grab his natural exuberance a little firmly. It wasn’t until his mother had commented on it, that he realized he might need some of that exuberance. He was Tony Stark, after all. His exuberance was part of what made him the success he’d been. Now he had to harness it. The first step was taking this degree seriously.

He leaned forward as the door finally opened. Rhodey stood next to him. The group of unhappy researchers filed passed him in discomfort. Tony shot Rhodey a confused look. His topic hadn’t been that controversial. A simple topic on electronic interface, admittedly one he could now do in his sleep, but it wasn’t too far off his original topic and nothing that should have ruffled feathers like this.

His adviser poked his head out. He looked harried. The man boasted a brilliant research career with hands in many pies. Tony had loved being his student for 18 months. This person taught him that a true invention utilized all sciences, not just the specialty of the primary researcher. He also told Tony that learning must go in all directions; not just forward, but also backward. At his exhausted beckoning, Tony met Rhodey’s eyes uneasily. His defense the first time had been a breeze. 

“Sit down Tony.”

_ Shit! _ That was never good. Tony sat across from his adviser. Rhodey had probably already resumed pacing outside the door. Rhodey read people better than Tony after all.

“You passed. Barely.” Tony blinked at him.  _ Well, that was good _ . “Listen. As your friend, I want you to know that was battle that made very little sense.”

Tony frowned at him. His adviser had been good to him and Tony remembered sponsoring students of his a couple times in later years. But they had never been exceedingly close. Maybe that was another relationship that he’d missed in the haze of altered reality. One, he’d like to avoid missing this time.

“What actually happened?”

He sighed, “I won’t name names. This could ruin a career. Maybe it should. I’m not certain what to do Tony.” He stared at the student again. “They refused to pass you.”

“What?” Tony gaped at him. “Why?”

Here was when his adviser shrugged his shoulders. “They each had reasons that had very little to do with your thesis and normally would have ignored. To be frank, I felt like I was defending my own research a little, coming up with a rebuttal each time they said something. In the end, logic won, but, Tony, someone has it out for you. They didn’t feel this way last week. Its too much of a coincidence.”

“Bribery.” Tony’s voice was flat. The adviser made a face at him. Tony didn’t want to put the man on the spot. This wasn’t a battle field his advisor sought, he had no right to drag the man onto it. He placed a hand on the man’s wrist, “I got it. Don’t worry about it. Thanks for having my back.”

The man brightened a touch, but he still looked miserable. The idea that one of his colleagues would do this seemed to be hitting him hard. Tony winced as guilt rose in his chest for having exposed someone like this to that reality. He’d liked his adviser because they were both complete geeks. They both loved to get completely lost in the science and engineering and forget the stupid of the world like grants and bills and politics. That lack was precisely the drive behind the creation of his lab spaces in the future. He didn’t want this man to lose that essence of enthusiasm.

“I mean it, thank you.”

* * *

Telling Rhodey about the conversation was harder. The man was only on leave for the week but Tony drove him out to this little slice of coast in Rhode Island. They used to go there and watch Fischer’s Island when they were undergrads. It wasn’t too far and Tony could tell that Rhodey’s temper was fraying a bit. Maybe some of this would be better if said in a empty beach than a closed house with people a few rooms away. So, Tony called to let Maria know he’d passed and they’d meet her in New Haven to celebrate instead of Boston and changed routes.

They arrived at the beach having spent much of the two hour drive ranting at the radio. Tony could practically feel the ease slip away as they sat and reality returned. Tony had almost not passed. It wouldn’t mean much of a delay, but just the concept that he didn’t pass would send the board into a tizzy. Even a temporary failure, was still a failure and it would be leverage to be used against him. He was running out of time to protect himself. 

“Okay, we are in the middle of no-fucking-where. Now will you tell me what happened in December?” Rhodey tossed him a sandwich they’d picked up at the bodega before leaving the city behind.

Tony took a deep breath. He considered many ways to tell Rhodey this information. He’d even thought of writing it down and letting the man read it. That particular idea was short lived as Tony would be a pacing, nervous wreck the whole time. Finally, he decided to rip the band-aid off of his father’s death. Three simple, quick sentences. “I knew they were going to crash. I knew it wasn’t going to be Howard’s fault. I knew it was a hit.” Tony waited.

Rhodey almost dropped the piece of sandwich he’d bitten out of his mouth before he closed his mouth to chew. “A hit! It was a hit?”

Tony nodded, pulling his legs up to wrap his arms around his knees. “Yeah, that’s an even longer story and I don’t know all of it yet. I didn’t want to know, originally, but...yeah, now I kind of wished I’d figured it out.”

“Woah, okay, back up and start at the beginning, Tones. You’ve lost me.” Rhodey responded to his posture by putting his hands out calmly, offering support when necessary.

Tony gave him a grin that hopefully was more solid than it felt.

“Actually I’m going to start at the end.” He had to joke or he didn’t think he’d make it through it all. In the future, some of this never aired. He'd bottled it up and shoved in a dark drawer in the back of his mind. Now, there was a veil between him and that future. Not that it happened to another person, but more that distance had eased the pain. He made a side note to look into physical changes from PTSD. He looked out across the water, “I’m 49 years old. I lost both of my parents to an assassination in 1991 that I discovered only 3 years ago. It turned out one of my closest friends, not you, kept the knowledge from me for over 2 years before that so he could use my money to find the assassin and save him because the assassin had no fucking choice. But that didn’t matter in the end because the whole world was about to be doomed.”

Rhodey blinked at him, sandwich completely forgotten. It took him opening his mouth a few times before actual words exited. “You- you’re not being dramatic are you?”

Tony chuckled dryly at the weak hope. He’d finally surprised Rhodey completely. It had occurred to him to wonder how much Rhodey could take before that happened. Still, the reality of it made his throat tight.

“Trust me, I wish I was. I didn’t expect to come back in time. I expected to not wake up again at all. Then suddenly you’re pushing me out of bed and laughing at me. Christ Rhodey, I hadn’t heard you laugh in months.” Tony’s voice broke. Rhodey had been overly protective and raw since Afghanistan, but after the Civil War mess, his chuckles had been few and far between as he overcame his partial paralysis with Tony’s help. With the arrival and subsequent results of Thanos, even those brief releases of tension had stopped.

Rhodey opened and closed his mouth as Tony saw the shock and terror grow in his eyes. He looked down at his sandwich before setting it on the bench. “Fuck.”

Tony agreed with that reaction wholeheartedly. Rhodey stared out across the water, but Tony didn’t think that was what he was seeing. Tony rather thought Rhodey was seeing the world. He was seeing his cousin cooking with his mother. He was seeing his Nana growl at his father. He was seeing the soldiers he worked with everyday try their hardest. He was seeing all the kids going through growing pains and trying to grow up despite them. Tony had been shoved into the end of the world scenario without enough time to really appreciate how overwhelming it could be. But now they had time to properly process.

“What’re you gonna do?”

Tony chuckled.  “Fuck if I know.”

“I guess I’ll do that with you.” Rhodey slung an arm across Tony’s shoulders.

Tony laughed and stole the remainder of his sandwich. As they sat there he slowly told Rhodey about his first shot at being twenty. Not the big events but the partying, the drugs, the sex. He told him about the weapons and the media. All the frustrations that he’s hoping to avoid this time around poured out on that cold beach until they were sitting there in silence. It was cleansing. He knew he’d go over it with his friend a bit more organized later. Right now, it as enough that Rhodey was grasping the utter spiral his life had been heading.

“I guess the turbulence ended at some point, since you went out saving the world and all.” Rhodey commented when Tony had grown quiet again.

Tony snorted, “Yeah, got a wake up call that I hope not to repeat. Extended vacation with some terrorists who wanted my mad science skills.” He’d meant to sound flippant, and for the most part he’d succeeded, but Rhodey knew him too well.

Rhodey’s eyes went wide in horror. He was in the air force, he had some idea of what a POW camp looked like. “Knowing you, I bet you said no.” Rhodey hugged him closer with his arm behind Tony’s shoulders.

“I tried.” Tony’s quiet statement carried easily and Rhodey waited, “I never said 'yes', but I stopped saying 'no' at some point.”

Rhodey hummed. Then Rhodey looked away from the view to meet his eyes in a serious gaze, “So we’re still friends right?”

Tony snorted. “You’re the one that found me.” He looked over at Rhodey, feeling water gather in his eyes again.  _ Damn these hormones and puberty and all this emotional crap _ ! “I wouldn’t be anywhere without my Rhodey-Bear.” Tony’s voice broke on that last syllable and Rhodey drew him close.

“I gotcha Tones.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Intelli-crops were mentioned in IM 1 as important and ignored
> 
> “Up and forward are only two directions, science should look in all directions.” -Bones S4E19
> 
> Tony calls Winter's mission a hit, because I believe he truly thought it was after Civil War. They never show him learning otherwise.
> 
> Also, for any who noticed X) yes I added a chapter to the total number. This chapter was originally twice as long, but I decided the second half made more sense split off.


	7. Not Only a Night, an Age

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tony starts his preparation to what he knows is coming.
> 
> The shore was lucky in being backed by cliff,  
The cliff in being backed by continent;  
It looked as if a night of dark intent  
Was coming, and not only a night, an age.  
Someone had better be prepared for rage.  
There would be more than ocean-water broken  
Before God’s last 'Put out the light' was spoken.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this is the other half of Chapter 6. They really didn't go together in one chapter. This is a bit of a time jump
> 
> Also, in my headcannon here, Maria is very Italian. Thus the Italian words that pop up. I don't really intend to translate them unless someone asks since mostly they are little pet names.

Telling Rhodey had been therapeutic. He let Rhodey in on some changes he planned for SI and the frustration at trying to work with the board during spring break. He missed Pepper, but he had tried every variation of Virginia Potts he could think of, and he couldn’t find her. He even remembered her birth date, she’d be proud. Still, the first he’d knew of her was in 2000 when she worked for Killian Aldrich. Otherwise he had no idea how to find her.

And so the year flew by. Rhodey left at the end of spring break, but Tony remained at the mansion with his mother. Although, technically his degree was “pending”, he took up the CEO mantle at the spring Board Meeting. This involved shifting a lot of R&D tasks over to the current staff, a group Tony knew almost nothing about. While he’d been behind most of SI’s inventions for the four years leading up to Howard's death, he’d always filtered them through his father, and after, in the previous timeline, Stane. For the moment, he was trusting the current scientists to take his designs and run with them. He had too much else to focus on.

He had several long term to-dos. Shifting SI away from weapons was a big one. He wanted to maintain the military ties, to protect the soldiers, and defense technology opened a lot of doors so he was pushing that way. Clean energy, also, would be pursued. Arc reactor technology wouldn’t be viable until the building of the SNS and he could create the parts to build the new element his father envisioned. Until then, he could at least start the research to minimize it and introduce it into as many of his plants as possible. His father’s “hippie dream”, as Stane put it, could become a reality and Tony would see to it. Month after month, he fought the board, going to the press when they were too stubborn. He had a lifetime of experience manipulating the press for his own purposes to put to good use.

He also had some relationships he wanted to build. Wakanda, for one. He never understood why his father had stopped once he got the vibranium from them, but Tony refused to be a fair-weather friend. He wanted to be able to talk to Shuri when the girl genius started her journey of discovery. He also wanted to reach out to Hope. Tony hadn’t seen her since rich-kids-boarding-school, prior to their fathers’ pissing contest. He knew through the pipeline that she was a manager in R&D for her father’s company, and that she was frustrated at the blatant gender divide. A divide he wanted to remove from SI as soon as possible.

That gender divide was a bit of a whiplash for Tony, coming from a time when women had gained enough ground where a high level female wasn't unusual, and in fact, a significant, even if not equal, portion of the business world. That fact that he _couldn't_ name his mother CEO was evidence of that and Tony had to yank himself harshly into this reality of that. He vowed to push that through fast.

There were others he wanted to reach out to. While working with Peter, he’d met some of the more local heroes in New York and he wanted to reach out to Rand, Murdock, and Jones’s parents. He had been pleasantly surprised that Alisa Jones was on their interview list as a mathematician. That helped a bit and her husband was a mechanic. He’d tabled that after a whisper in HR. Murdock was a fighter and left the rounds at the same time as Happy started them, so hopefully that would be a two-birds-one-stone scenario. Maybe he could tap Murdock as a security officer or something? He didn’t know exactly when or how Matt got his abilities, but he’d like to help the kid out. If he remembered correctly, Happy graduated from High School in the mid-90’s so they could end up working together. Plus, it could solve his exercise need.

Rand enterprises would spring up in the next few years and he’d keep an eye out for that too. They were a crooked company when he became aware of them through Danny's re-entry into the world, but at the start, they may have been clean. Danny's parents may have been the clean side of the company. He wasn’t sure he could help them survive the crash that, if he understood right, gave Danny his enhancements, but he could help the company survive for his own uses and then Danny at least would have something to return to. Tony knew first hand that it was a cold comfort at best, but it could be something.

He also had some people to investigate. Shouting a request at Jarvis and the Commandos would jump-start that. He knew Aunt Peggy was busy, but he’d give her at least a heads up on some people. He reached out to the Commandos personally. There was another change he made immediately. 

Most of them had shown up at the funeral and where before he’d brushed them off, this time he’d reached out. And thankfully, they’d reached back. Living the life he’d lived had given him more perspective on old hurts. His father’s obsession with Steve had wrought enough victims. Much of that gap had probably been fostered by Stane anyway. Tony wished he could have had a little more time with his father, to try to repair that, but he didn’t let that thought linger. He’d already been given a second chance for so much by the grace of some god out there. He aspired to avoid avarice.

Connecting with the commandos turned out rather simple. For one thing, Dum Dum Dugan and Jim Morita were in Connecticut. When the war was over, Dugan had returned to find his mother dead and his teenage brother in jail. Rather than try to go it alone, Morita had dragged him across the country to California where a sister had survived the camps and awaited her brother’s return. They’d returned across the country when Morita’s brother-in-law started work in Philadelphia. Dugan and Morita packed up their appliance repair shop and moved with the family. They’d apparently remained close to Gabe Jones and Colonel Phillips until the retired Colonel’s death in the early 80s. 

Gabe Jones had married young and had a military career that ended with retirement when his daughter died, orphaning her only child and leaving the kid in Jones’ hands. Rather than drag the kid towards West Point, after his retirement Gabe and his wife had moved to New Haven. Morita and Dum Dum had followed when Morita’s sister had moved to Boston. The three Commandoes had been working together to raise the boy and Morita’s niece played with him often. Tony vaguely remembered funding the kid through military training after his grandfather’s death in a few years.

Together, they also introduced Tony and Maria to Percivius “Pinky” Pinkerton and General Sam Sawyer. Both had joined the Commandoes after Howard and Steve had left the war. Pinky and Tony shared a family legacy, but where Tony had kept his while being a playboy, Pinky had used his philandering lifestyle to run away from his. His brother’s death during the war had been enough to draw the young Brit into combat, but he did not return to his family following the war, instead choosing to live in the US running a sort of night club in Brooklyn. 

Retired-General Sam Sawyer lived near DC with his son and family. He still took time to talk military politics as requested, but most of his life existed in a wheelchair on the front porch watching over his grandchildren since his retirement in 1990.

Similarly, Falsworth still worked closely with the British military but they had all lost track of Jacques Dernier. He could be tracked until the Treaty of Paris and then a few later munitions work looked similar, but the man himself disappeared into history. Even without the Frenchman, the Commandoes made a powerful group and impressive resource to work with. Tony was grateful they were not only willing, but eager to connect and help Howard’s remaining family.

He wanted to look into Stane first and foremost. Prying him out of the company would take very careful planning. Pierce was another person he would keep an eye out for. The snake would enter politics eventually and then they’d start on him. Several other minor problems he was looking for, but those two needed to be tracked as soon as they entered politics.

In April, when the Bosnian War hit the news, SI was forefront on weapons. Tony designed better tactical equipment that the government was sending, despite heavy pressure from the UN to leave well enough alone. Since, Stane was in full support of this, Tony kept a close eye on weapons sales. Tony and Maria quietly bought the excess stock and nudged two board members to retirement as the draw of weapons sales kept everyone busy. Similarly, Tony restructured R&D to add clean energy research and medical research groups while expanding the food research divisions. Although he doubted he was pulling the wool over Stane’s eyes, the board remained blissfully unaware.

After the semester’s end, Rhodey started working more with Air Force Research. Tony strengthened that tie as he turned out better protection for the soldiers and more precise weapons. His memory was a huge asset there, feeding designs and specs to R&D for testing almost faster than the lab could keep up. The board and upper management grew accustomed to reviewing and approving new product concepts on an almost weekly basis. This gave Tony a lot of latitude in the business organization under the proposal of expanding the manufacturing environment. He strangled mass destruction projects in their infancy and redirected the technology to propulsion research or explosives. Stane did still keep his own research section and Tony was keeping an eye out for the sonic taser with mild paranoia, but as Stane produced fewer and fewer products compared to Tony, his support waned.

* * *

It’s a breezy September day when he finally saw Pierce. He and Maria were celebrating a successful quarter and the removal of another irritating board member at Dum Dum’s place. They’d invited the group together. It would be the first time since Howard’s funeral this many of them existed in the same room at the same time. Peggy would arrive later that evening with Angie, and Rhodey would phone in from his base camp so they could all congratulate each other. Falsworth was even visiting from England. Ana had outdone herself with dinner.

Ana had just set the cake on the table and everyone gave her due admiration when Morita and Jarvis walked in and went to the TV. Turning it on, they immediately drew everyone’s attention. The newstation was just starting its 6pm run.

“You were looking for a politician named Pierce, right? Alexander Pierce?” Morita’s question got a nod from Tony and the TV flicked to show the bastard standing next to the joint chiefs. Tony went quiet as Morita stood to the side. “They just announced full support of the Bosnian War and denounced the Serbs. They’re pushing for a vote in Congress to officially back a side in the war.”

Tony felt himself swallow hard. Pierce was already HYDRA. The war, HYDRA covering up peaceful solutions. That was how the snake operated. It undermined treaties and confidence while poking sleeping dragons with lit branches. The Bosnian conflict was a perfect set up for them. As Yugoslavia broke up, new government bodies emerged into being, easily infiltrated as everyone gained their footing. Not only would the chaos of the Bosnian War forward HYDRA principles, but with all the ethnic cleansing and city bombing, HYDRA bases could set up and run experiments and training without interference, save the random happenstance. And here in the US Peirce smoothed the way. Tony wasn’t working fast enough.

Peggy strolled in as they all stared at the TV. Behind her Angie carried in ice cream. Angie had been a poorly kept secret in the group. Maria told Tony at one point that the two had been together in someway since the late 50s. They owned a home together in Syracuse, but with Peggy still active at SSR or SHIELD or whatever, Tony doubted they spent much time there. Howard’s influence had been instrumental in shielding Peggy from the anti-lesbian, anti-feminism craze of the 50s and 60s. He argued that the woman most famous for her romance with Captain America wasn’t lesbian and could live in a house with another woman without having sex. While Peggy had secretly supported many pro-lesbian groups, including the Furies, on a professional level she and Angie were simply best friends. Following the Kowalski trial, they made the transition to being out, though Peggy naturally avoided the limelight as part of her career. 

Now, just coming from a meeting, she strode in still dressed in her slacks and blouse before stopping at the TV. She sighed. “I was going to tell you. You know I don’t know why you were worried. This is one of the few modest politicians. He passed all our checks easily.”

Tony nodded, feeling gravel settle in his stomach. He hadn’t ever heard back from Barnes. For all he knew, the man had been captured again. He didn’t exactly have a way to look for him either. Not without explaining a hell of a lot that he shouldn’t explain. When he had the Iron Man armor, he’d have a bit more flexibility. Or the world wide web, whichever came first.

He stood and exited the room to the night air. It felt refreshing. They were further north here, so the air was a bit cooler with a touch of fall coming in. He leaned his elbows against the railing. A large mass built in his throat at the overwhelming amount of shit piling up. Even Peggy had been taken in by Pierce. What if she was right? What if the man was a good man once. What if the politician was actually doing his bast at this point in history and joined HYDRA later. He could be going after an innocent man!

Tony tried to swallow around the brick lodged in his throat. He folded over himself, burying his head in his hands. _I _ _ don’t know what I'm doing! _

“Antonio?”

He didn’t turn to look at his mother. He didn’t know what to say, and if he did, he wasn’t certain the words would make it out of his mouth. She wrapped a shawl around him and leaned on the banister next to him. It was a habit she’d retained from her own mother. The shawl was a light airy material, but even as a child, he’d been told that sometimes you just needed a blanket. A shawl was a grown up blanket, that’s all.

“Howard hated weapons.” Maria’s calm comment drew him from his thoughts and earned her a glance from her son. “He liked the technology and he cared about the soldiers. Too much sometimes. But he always hated weapons. That was why he loved Captain America so much. A weapon that carried a shield, that would protect first. He could never recover from the weapons he made.”

Tony took a deep shaky breath as his father’s last words on the matter came to mind. It seemed like that car ride was so long ago. Yet he could remember Howard’s response to his long withheld question of why:

_ “I build them to protect the soldiers.” _

“Howard built the company from nothing, but you know he never could balance those personal touches. That was why all our charities were in my name. He couldn’t put the company in my name, but the charities could be. The board wouldn’t respect a woman CEO. Your father, all he ever wanted was to play in the lab. Tinker with toys.” The last sentence was whispered to keep her voice from breaking. She smiled into the darkness. Tony saw wet tracks in her makeup. “You know, he proposed with a mechanical flower?” Maria looked at Tony with a wide, wet smile. A wet chuckled followed as she gestured a flower with her hands, “It was supposed to open its petals and give me a ring. Only, it’s stalk was off and it ended up throwing the ring at me.”

Tony looked at her in complete amazement. He’d never seen any of this side to his parents. Maria was laughing quietly behind her silent tears as she pantomimed the ring hitting her forehead and falling. Then she looked at the ring on her finger, fiddling, clearly remembering, “After the ring hit me in the face and landed in my lap, he just looked at me with the most sheepish expression and asked me. ‘Marry me?’ he said.” She let out a soft chuckle, half wet from the sob she was likely still suppressing. She clutched her hands around the ring a moment, eyes closed, before releasing whatever memory she’d been in. 

She turned to Tony and patted his cheek. “That is how I remember him. That awkward man who just loved to do awkward things to see if I would smile for him.” It sounded so much like Tony’s clumsy attempts with Pepper that Tony couldn’t breathe for shock. She gave Tony a smile. “I wish you had known him as an adult. You two would have had such fun in the lab together. Once you were old enough to see around his communication issues and once he saw that you were not a threat to him.”

“_ Threat _ to him?” Tony’s voice was strangled. The shock of being a threat in any way to his giant of a father broke the hold over his tongue. Nothing threatened Howard for long. Howard made sure of that. Anything stupid enough to threaten him, or anything he protected, swiftly learned the consequences of such folly. 

Maria sighed and gave him a tight smile. “My little _Bambino_, you exceed your father in most things. He only kept up with you through greater experience.” Maria gave him a wry smile. _ Well, bully for him _ , Tony thought sourly as Maria continued, ignorant of her son’s thoughts, “He told me once that he feared you would grow bored of him and then where would he be. Then he feared you would never grow up at all. We both did.” Maria frowned at him, rubbing a hand up and down his arm. “All those nasty parties and toxic people. The pain it caused both of us when you returned from that kidnapping by that Bain creature! And you _wouldn’t_ heal.”

Tony gulped. He didn’t remember their reaction to Bain that way. He remembered being told he was weak, he was useless, worse even. He remembered being forced to explain to the entire board. He remembered being banned from any SI lab for a month. That was when he turned to drugs for a distraction. Until then he’d only really used alcohol, but with nothing to work on, he slowly started tearing his hair out. The drugs helped, sometimes.

But worry? He didn’t remember worry. Blame, humiliation, punishment, and disappointment colored their interactions. He remembered that. 

“My _ Bambino _ , I support anything you wish with SI, but please, do not lose what you inherited from your father. Finish your project, _ Mia caro _.” Tony jumped. It took him a moment to follow the topic change his mother had just performed. But when he managed to track her concern, he was surprised. He hadn’t known his mother had been aware of his work, or lack thereof, on JARVIS. He'd done the outlining and base work before the time skip even. He had been pleasantly surprised to find that work actually not too far off his final concept. While waiting on his Masters defense, he'd thrown himself into JARVIS as a distraction, a problem he could solve without the nuisance of people clogging up the plan. He had at least another few months of coding, though it was definitely going faster this time around. Redoing is certainly faster than doing. Tony did miss his constant companion. He looked at his mother’s worried face and swept her into a hug.

“The world is not your burden, _ Bambino _.”

There, that was what he’d missed the first time around. Only Rhodey ever told him that.

“Thank you, _ Mammina _.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Pepper worked for Killian Aldritch in the MCU universe briefly. Rumor has it she left when the jerk harassed her.
> 
> Howard did invent the Arc reactor in the 1970's according to Stane in IM1
> 
> For my readers, since I introduced a bunch of characters here (though they all exist in MCU):  
Commandoes:  
Dum Dum Dugan - no blood family, llives and works with Morita  
Jim Morita- Sister, Brother-in-law and niece live in Boston, Lives and works with Dugan  
Gabe Jones - Married, custody of his deceased daughter's only son  
Falsworth - One living child, lives in UK, works with British armed forces  
Pinky Pinkerton - Runs a Brooklyn Night club, Rich British upbringing  
Sam Sawyer - Retired General, still attends meeting in DC, Wheelchair, Lives with son and grandkids  
Others:  
Edwin Jarvis - head of household at Stark Manor, Husband of Ana, Called Jarvis by Tony(and thus in this story)  
Ana Jarvis - head of kitchen at Stark Manor, Wife of Edwin Jarvis  
Peggy Carter - Lives in DC, owns a home with Angie in Syracuse, Head of SSR/SHIELD  
Angie Martinelli - Lives mostly in Syracuse, NY, in a (closeted)relationship with Peggy Carter
> 
> Soooooooooo, I won't be updating next week. *ducks for cover* I'll be abroad and internet will be iffy so you guys will have to wait 2 weeks for the return of the Winter Soldier (he is back in the last chapter)
> 
> Also, that will conclude this story and the next story in the series will pick up from Winter's perspective mostly :)


	8. I took the One Less Traveled By

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Barnes finally returns! Tony has to face decisions he made on that day, with a concussion, the good and the bad. But now he will move forward!
> 
> Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—  
I took the one less traveled by,  
And that will make all the difference.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Heads Up: brief discussion of slavery that may be triggering.  
Massive objectification and Torture reference here!  
Please be gentle with yourself!

The second Christmas without Howard Stark turned out very different than the first. For one thing, Maria scheduled the usual array of parties. Her foundation had its glittery fundraising, followed by a smaller office party. SI of course had 3 glamorous parties that included Tony, and doubtlessly many more that Tony could remain blissfully unaware of. As the Stark family, they also held a gala of there own, not including actual family. Then there were the numerous parties _ others _ were holding, Tony had to attend parties from various companies and supporters, in addition to certain charities and fundraisers. And, of course, actual family events. Tony felt his head spin a bit, but he kept up, more or less. Rhodey was stateside for much of the holidays, so Tony was determined to spend some time with him. He hadn’t known how busy Rhodey was before he became SI’s contact in the military. In the previous time, Stane had kept the barely recovering grief-filled engineer working between sneaking out to parties and getting completely plastered. Maria wouldn’t put up with that in the least. 

Still, Tony was kept hopping. Dum Dum and Morita were enjoying the mansion this season and Tony hoped they stopped dancing around each other, at least in private. The pair had lived together since returning from the war, helping each other through shell-shock and starting a combination business in appliance repair. They used Dum Dum’s love of mechanics and Morita’s skill with electronics to work together for nearly 50 years. Most of the group had slowly come around to the idea that they were partners in every way, even if they refused to agree.

Being from a time when alternative sexuality was more accepted, Tony accepted the whole thing with complete lack of surprise. In fact, the only time he integrated himself into the conversation was when he stumbled on Peggy, Jones and Rhodey’s cousin talking about it. They’d been trying to explain to the young woman that the two would get together eventually and everyone would be happy for them. Tony inserted himself into the conversation with exasperation. He wondered aloud what was wrong with their partnership as it was. He wondered why anyone else’s definition of ‘together’ should factor in. And finally, he wondered, rather loudly and with mild shivers, why the hell any of them were discussing the two septuagenarians have sex! Ick! They were like his uncles, the idea of what went on behind closed door could remain there, _thank you very much_!

The trio just stared at him in surprise. He turned on his heel and left rather than deal with the fallout of that conversation, but he heard as he left the Rhodey’s cousin agreed with him. While it didn’t stop the speculation and sometimes teasing, it did quiet a lot of it. Including some very speculative looks from Aunt Peggy.

Unfortunately for the parties this year, Aunt Peggy and Aunt Angie were not going to make it until very early Christmas Eve morning. But, Maria had promised them all that Christmas Morning would be family only. Going into the last large pre-Christmas gathering, Tony couldn’t help but be grateful for that. He had enough on his plate.

Plus Tony had another guest.

He’d stepped out of his office onto the balcony behind the house to take a breather on the 23rd when it finally happened. 

Maria prepped for the party inside, so Tony stole a very much needed a minute alone because he had just finished reading the quarterly report on the search for Captain America. Howard had a trust fund set up to keep it going and both Maria and Tony were tentatively involved, mostly so Tony could keep an eye out for the tesseract. Tony’s hesitancy came from the rough first meeting he remembered, though as the year had passed, the future was fading a bit. He had brought JARVIS fully online just a week earlier and his voice filled the lab. Slowly, he’d integrate JARVIS at work but planned to introduce the fledgling AI to the family Christmas Eve Morning.

He huffed the cold air before a quiet sound drew his attention to the other end of the balcony. At first he thought a cat or maybe a poor frozen squirrel had crunched itself near his office door for warmth. He’d need to get Ana up to deal with it then, because Maria would absolutely murder him if he let an animal loose in the house right before a party. But he didn’t want to leave whatever it was out here to freeze. Siberia taught him how painful that could be.

It turned out to not be a furry animal, cold or otherwise. Tony froze as Barnes stepped out of the shadows. He hadn’t seen the assassin in over a year. The guy certainly looked worse for wear. His hair was past his shoulders, ratty and uneven, like he’d gone at it with scissors at some point out of frustration. The tactical outfit he’d warn both a year previous, and during the other timeline was no where to be seen. Instead the assassin had somehow decided Henley's were in style, doubling on a navy over a red, which Tony could only see because the navy one had numerous burn holes in it. He’d also acquired a military camo jacket, but it too had seen some wear. The metal arm was twitching in what was probably some sort of short, which explained why the bag he was carrying was in his flesh arm. He’d done what looked like the bare necessity to keep himself alive, Tony could see his ribs through his shirt layers for Christ’s sake!

“Umm… Hi?” That at least sparked a reaction from the silent statue even if it was Tony’s worst opening line ever.

“Mission complete. Awaiting analysis review.”

The gravelly voice barely traveled across the balcony between them. The slate blue eyes never wavered in staring mid-distance towards Tony. Still, the words did shock Tony out of his fugue. Tony swore slightly and grabbed Barnes’s flesh arm and yanked him inside.

“What the fuck! Are you trying to kill yourself? Don’t answer that! When was the last time you had a meal? No, don’t answer that either. Jesus!” Tony growled as he dragged the man inside his office. Barnes kept opening his mouth to answer the rhetorical questions as Tony closed the balcony doors and shoved his fully ignored lunch at the assassin.

“This asset is still functioning at 56% efficiency. Nutritional intake will be required in 3.6 hours and regenerative rest will be necessary in 1.5 days. Maintenance on the arm is required to return to full effectiveness.” Barnes monotoned as he held the plate semi-securely in his metal hand.

Tony blinked at him. The man really thought of nothing beyond the programming. The report had no inflection to it, his eyes didn’t move much after scoping out the room. He didn’t even take a bite of the food in his hand. No wonder Howard couldn’t break him out of it. Hell, it took Steve almost dying twice to snap him out of it. 

Barnes held out a satchel. Tony stared at the torn dirty bag in confusion. “Umm, what’s in the bag?”

“Objective 6: Retrieve all possible data on Winter Soldier program.” 

Tony blinked at him in amazement before looking down at the handles he’d automatically taken from the exhausted soldier. Vaguely, he wondered where his aversion to being handed things had misplaced itself since his backward jaunt. “What objective?”

Barnes looked at him briefly at that point, before re-focusing in the middle distance again. Tony began to associate that with Barnes reporting-mode. “Objective 1: Prevent legal authorities from gaining knowledge of the identity, whereabouts and actions of the Asset. Objective 2: Do not cause further harm to Howard and Maria Stark. Objective 3: Locate a telephone and call 9-1-1 and report car crash caused by Asset’s previous mission. Objective 4: Destroy all other evidence of Asset’s previous mission. Objective 5: Prevent previous handlers from tracking, obtaining or locating Asset. Objective 6: Retrieve all possible data on Winter Soldier Program. Objective 7: Locate new handler when the Handler is isolated and the interaction will go unnoticed.”

Tony’s eyes grew wider as the Asset recited these objectives in a perfectly steady, blank voice. “I said all that? With a concussion? Oh, eat! You look terrible. I think you took a few liberties with my instructions.”

Barnes paused after a bite and obediently parroted back a conversation Tony didn’t remember that well. “ ‘Cover your tracks with the authorities, don’t hurt my parents, call 911 for the crash, destroy all other evidence. Make sure your handlers won’t come after you and bring all data you can about your program. Find me when you are done and we are both alone and no one will notice you.’” 

Although the entire thing was in his gravely voice, he’d used inflections he must remember from Tony over a year ago. Tony had to admit it did sound a bit like him, even with a concussion.

Tony snorted. “Okay, so you definitely have some sass in there somewhere. Good to know.” Tony raised the bag and opened it. Inside were several dense files and a box of a dozen or so floppy disks. _ God, he missed flash drives! _ That would take time to go through. Time, Tony really didn’t have right now. Tony would put it off until after the holidays. His mother would pitch an absolute fit if he started a new project right now. Nevermind Pepper, Maria Stark on a warpath was a sight to behold! “Okay, so do you wanna report? Did you meet all those....objectives?”

Barnes had finished the sandwich by then and quickly downed the first water bottle Tony handed him, “Objective 1: Ongoing prevention of legal authorities detection of Asset. Up to date, no clean up necessary. All evidence of Asset’s presence prior to 1300 hours local time is suppressed or erased. Objective 2: No further harm was caused to Maria Stark. Objective 2 for Howard Stark was invalid due to death prior to receiving the objective. Objective 3: 9-1-1 system informed of crash and car fire allowed for greater visibility while also completing Objective 1 and 4. Objective 4: Video tape and tools present at scene of car crash destroyed beyond recovery.”

“The video? Where was the camera? Why _ was _there video anyway?”

Barnes paused. He didn’t seem to mind Tony interrupting him. Probably a good thing since Pepper had once told him that Tony was categorically unable to _ not _ interrupt anyone. “Previous handlers preferred to visually record missions to explicate education process of the Asset. Upon discovering an error, the asset is retrained while the error is displayed to prevent repetition.”

Barnes’s tone didn’t fluctuate a bit, but Tony saw his fist clench and his breathing became more ragged. Tony reached out and placed a hand on the flesh shoulder. The touch seemed to startle the soldier, but he did nothing to protest. Instead, his hands relaxed and he waited. Tony eventually concluded he was waiting for Tony.

“Um...continue to report.” It would take Tony a while to get used to someone waiting for him before continuing. Most people around him gave up on that immediately since his attention bounced around like a hyper ping-pong ball at times.

“All paperwork and documentation of retrieval assignment destroyed at safehouse and-”

“Retrieval?”

Barnes just blinked at him and Tony realized that had likely been slightly unclear as a question. “What retrieval assignment?” Tony rephrased.

“Objective 4: Destroy all other evidence of Asset’s previous mission.”

Tony blinked. He had thought the assassination was the previous assignment. “Okay, okay. State the previous assignment’s objectives.”

“Previous Objective 1: collect super serum replicate samples from Howard Stark. Objective 2: retrieve or destroy all witnesses and proof of assignment. Objective 3: Limit exposure during assignment. Objective 4: return with all items to handler.” Barnes halted here. For the first time, Tony thought he saw uncertainty creep into the slate eyes. “The asset did not complete this assignment due to conflicting objectives with current handler.”

Tony could almost hear the voice inside the man plead to be told he’d made the right choice. “Excellent. In fact, do you have any standing orders?”

“Primary protocol 1: Always obey handler. The handler is identified by the most recent individual who has spoken the appropriate access codes. Primary Protocol 2: When lacking objective or handler, return to operational base for repairs and retraining. Primary Protocol 3: Asset is to report any activity or situation which disrupts the asset’s ability to complete a mission. Primary Protocol 4: Asset is to request retraining when thoughts contrary to primary protocols occur.” Barnes’s recitation was delivered in a voice that shook slightly. It was the first sign of actual emotional reaction to his situation and Tony was beyond grateful to hear it. It meant there was something of Barnes under the Asset automaton they’d been creating. Whether it was always there or it was due to his long time being active should become more apparent as they moved forward.

“And retraining would be…?”

“This asset is placed in a chair and electric therapy removed the undesired mental processes. Then the current mechanics initiate the reprogramming process while the arm is under maintenance.”

And Tony had to dive into his bathroom to lose what breakfast he’d eaten. 

He’d known from the files what Barnes had went through. After Siberia, he’d dug them out and studied them. Pepper called it a masochistic method of grief. Rhodey had called it Tony’s fix-everything desire outrunning his common sense. Either way, he knew a lot about the program, but even he hadn’t known it was that bad.

Barnes appeared at the doorway by the time Tony regained control of his stomach. He glanced at the confused soldier. But holy-mother-fucking-Jesus-Christ-goddamn-son-of-a-bitch! Tony could understand a few things a bit better about what had happened before. Not Rogers, but Barnes’s lack of communication, lack of trust in turning himself in, the disappearing act when he finally broke free of this training. Tony would have turned tail too.

“Okay, okay.” Tony grimaced as he swallowed back some bile. The soldier seemed to hesitate before placing an unopened water bottle next to Tony. He must have grabbed it from the desktop. Jarvis was forever leaving them everywhere. Regardless, Tony took it gratefully.

“Sorry, okay, so I’m your handler right now, right?” A jerky nod answered him. “Okay. And you found all the files on your program right?” Another jerky nod. Seemed to be Barnes’s favorite method of communication. “Okay. I need to read those before I do anything dramatic, but for now. Your mission is to remain near me and come when I call you. Understood?”

“Mission objectives accepted. Objective 1: Maintain a position within eye sight or 50 meters of the handler. Objective 2: Approach handler upon request.”

Tony nodded. They were ongoing objectives since the primary ones had included what the man was to do when he had no objectives. He’d have to keep an eye on that. He didn’t want to risk Barnes going back because he didn’t have an on-going objective. Tony would have to construct something a bit more freeing and organized later, but for a few days this would work.

“I’m sorry I keep interrupting. Please continue with your previous report.” Tony huffed as he dragged himself to sit on the side of the tub in the bathroom, running a hand through his hair. He could feel stress sweat starting in his scalp and he just knew his mother would cluck at him if he went to her party that way.

“All paperwork and documentation of retrieval assignment were destroyed at safehouse and all personnel involved in the assignment eliminated. Objective 5: All tracking devices on the asset have been destroyed or shut down. The tracking device in the metal arm was burned out 46 hours prior to returning to the handler. The arm requires maintenance from the resultant electric shock. All handlers, mechanics, communications and personnel involved in the Winter Soldier program enough to have knowledge of the code words have been eliminated.”

“WHAT!?!”

Barnes paused before obediently parroting, “All handlers, mechanics, communications and personnel involved in the Winter Soldier program enough to have knowledge of the code words have been eliminated.”

Tony blinked at him. This was likely what had taken Barnes the longest of this entire assignment. He’d actually tracked down HYDRA and killed anyone who could have interfered with Tony’s claim. At least anyone to his knowledge. But, Tony hadn’t intended to cause all that death, and he certainly hadn’t intended to force Barnes to kill again. He quickly swallowed back the bile that threatened to reappear. 

_ "Objective 5: Prevent previous handlers from tracking, obtaining or locating Asset." _

The easiest way to do that would be to either change the code or kill all those who already knew the current code. Fuck, Tony had to be more careful with his mouth. The weight of how much control he had over another human being hit him anew. He’d always wondered, on a purely curiosity level, what slavery had been like from the owners' side, since history books always discussed the slave’s perspective or the economic perspective. While he doubted they felt this, since they didn’t usually view their slaves as humans, the complete control of another living creature was staggering. Unlike a pet, Barnes would understand when Tony spoke, species and language barrier couldn’t soften his instruction. This needed to be a sharp learning curve and a long road. 

“Continue.” Tony waved at him tiredly. Exhaustion suffocated him as the guilt and responsibility gradually became real. 

“Objective 6: All portable data on computers or written collected and presented to the handler in the bag. Remaining data is in a cache of more detailed information hidden in Romania, as carrying it would put the asset at risk of violating Objective 5. All information carried verbally is recorded and stored in that location prior to the individuals’ death.” Tony didn’t ask for elaboration on that. He was certain he didn’t want to hear it right now and he barely remained cognitive as it was. And he had to glad-hand yet tonight.

“Objective 7: Handler remained in another’s presence or another’s observation for the last 12 days until 2 hours prior to Asset’s return. Asset returned 46 minutes ago.” Barnes halted his recitation. Tony thought he heard a little bit of irritation at that last comment about getting him alone. It was true that Tony had little time to himself, especially this close to the holidays. Even in his lab, people were stopping by with food (Ana and Jarvis), questions (any of the Commandoes), or just to read while he worked (Maria, Angie or Ana). Even with the Avengers and Bruce, he hadn’t experienced this level of attention. At first it was a little stifling, but now he’d grown used to looking up and seeing someone.

Speaking of, he’d been alone for quite a time up here, someone was going to be looking for him soon. Tony glanced at the clock. He had less than an hour before his mother would start looking for him. 

“Okay...okay...okay, I’ve hit my limit on this right now and I’ve got to go play nice for people soon.” Tony cast about for a place Barnes could wait. The man needed sleep and food more than anything else right now anyway. They had psychology stuff to do, but that could wait until the man was at least in a physical condition to do so.

Part of Tony felt like he was running away from the situation. He was letting Barnes down, or somebody down somewhere. Self-analysis never claimed a title as one of his skills, many though they were. 

“All right, listen, I have a lab downstairs. No one will bother you there. You can meet JARVIS and sleep and eat more. A lot more, I can count your ribs. Through your shirt. I’m not supposed to be able to do that, _without_ the shirt!” Tony stood and strode out of the bathroom. For a moment he paced the room, organizing himself in his mind. He’d need to figure out a safe place for the soldier to recuperate. And friends, Tony could barely keep a robot alive and DUM-E didn’t need food. Plus, there was the complication of a very deadly, very confused assassin in his home. He grabbed the satchel and handed it to Barnes.

“Okay, you take this with you, the lab’s really the safest place for it anyway. But first…” Tony bent over and made a list. “I don’t know what kind of protective stuff you attach to your handlers, but these people you do not harm. Understood?”

Barnes read the list of people Tony considered family. It wasn’t terribly long, but the dozen names on the paper were essential to him. He didn’t want them harmed if Barnes came across them by accident. He didn’t really want anyone harmed, but if someone broke into his lab, they were likely up to no good from the start. Barnes looked up again and nodded.

“Protected person list accepted.” 

Tony coaxed Barnes back out onto the balcony and directed him to the lab windows on the far corner of the mansion. Then Tony practically sprinted through the house to open those windows that only opened from the inside.

“Sir, there is a man waiting outside that window. Is this normal procedure?”

Tony turned away from Barnes climbing in the lab to address his new AI. “No JARVIS. This is a special circumstance. This is Barnes.”

The Soldier, meanwhile, scoured the room, possibly looking for the source of the voice. “Oi, Frostbite, over here!”

It took Barnes a moment to realize Tony was talking to him. He ambled over, still scowling at dark corners. Clint and Natasha had been aggressive in eliminating dark corners in his labs too. DUM-E gave a questioning chirp and moved towards the newcomer. Tony chuckled as Barnes leaped out of his skin and propelled himself backwards across the couch at the bot’s approach. To date, in either timeline, it had to be the most ungraceful he’d seen of any of the supersoldiers he’d known.

“Easy, I wanted to introduce you before I disappear to find you some food and a blanket. This is DUM-E. He’s my first special snowflake.” He patted DUM-E’s carriage fondly. The bot preened under the attention. Barnes blinked at him in complete bewilderment from behind the couch and did not approach again. Tony waved at the computer monitor. “That’s JARVIS, the voice from earlier. He doesn’t have a body per se, but he’s mostly here in the lab.” Tony couldn’t wait for smartphones. This was aggravating!

“It is a pleasure to meet you.” JARVIS’s root greeting came across the speakers. He hadn’t the experience yet to request a name from people. The four weeks of training and six days of full activation wasn’t enough for him to have learned such interactions. In the original timeline, JARVIS had developed over the course of a year, with only sporadic interaction with Stane and Rhodey. Mostly, he’d learned from Tony’s behavior, and the internet. Tony hoped that by opening his social circle a bit, he’d learn a lot faster this time around.

“JARVIS, this is...What do you want to be called?” Tony looked at Barnes in question, as the man slowly came around the couch. It appeared that even in his caution, curiosity was a powerful motivator for the enhanced assassin.

Barnes gave him a blank look and Tony almost face-palmed. The man was programmed, he didn’t exactly have the capacity for self identification yet.

“Okay, table that for now, JARVIS put him on records as James. We’ll work on that.”

“Yes Sir. Also, you have a calendar reminder for ‘Stark Christmas Business Bash’. The starting time is in 30 minutes.” One of the first things Tony had taught JARVIS was keeping a calendar, because Tony had _ never _ managed it. That was why Pepper and JARVIS had always needed to work together and still they only succeeded half the time. Keeping a calendar for Tony prompted formulaic interaction that JARVIS could learn from, understanding of time and travel, observational opportunities with regards to how people spent their time and regular check ins. Before, JARVIS had started as a drinking guardian for Tony, to talk him out of excessive bingeing and dangerous behavior, while supporting him through the worst of his depression. Calendar had come second. From a sober, programming perspective, Tony thought the calendar was a better early learning activity. Especially since he avoided the non-sobriety of the other timeline for the most part.

Still, the reminder told him how close he was to disappointing his mother. Tony swore under his breath. “Okay, I’ll grab you a meal in a few hours once I’ve done the initial ‘meet and grit my teeth’. There is a blanket. Grab some shut eye. JARVIS start setting up a separate hard drive for scanning documents off a suspect disk. DUM-E, don’t feed him motor oil.”

Tony left them as JARVIS instructed DUM-E to shake hands with Barnes and the man backed away further from the two. He would have interfered, but Barnes appeared torn between interested and cautious and figured if they hadn’t figured it out by the time he found a meal, he’d intervene then.

* * *

Tony hid his yawn. The night was long and it wasn’t even 10:00 yet. He had an amnesiac in his lab, along with ultra secret, nightmare inducing science experiment papers to review. That was on top of his already very full plate. The Bosnian conflict had continued to escalate and pressure was added to SI for larger, more destructive weapons. The low grade mess in Israel wasn’t helping either. Tony had quietly re-distributed scientists as he could, but even he couldn’t do everything and Obadiah had to have figured it out by now. Tony knew two board members who were planning to retire in the next few years. Once that happened, Tony alone would split the max with Obadiah. Maria’s addition pushed everything over the mark by a significant portion.

Tony dredged up another smile and turned as Kathleen Allaire came over. Before, SI had kept back from Xerox until the turn around by Mulcahey in 2002, but Tony was trying to break into the tech market earlier and he wanted to partner up with Xerox as the leading in its field. Besides, he liked Paul and Kathy on a personal level. He’d seen Robin Gerstner earlier and made certain to indicate to his mother to maintain this relationship. Her husband would make IBM big in a few years and Tony wanted that connection to grow. Besides their Family Foundation was in Biomedical and Tony wanted to pair it up with the new Stark Medical division. The daughter was supposed to be an amazing biomedical researcher.

He spotted Obadiah working the room across the floor and Ana nearby. She was keeping an eye on him tonight. This was the networking party for SI they did, and she was trying to map out Obadiah’s connections. They’d been slowly steering the contracts away from his contacts, or forming new relationships with the ones they wanted to keep. Tony had begged his mother to be careful. For all he knew Obadiah had been the trigger puller for Barnes. There had been SI ties when he’s dug into Hydra files Steve and Natasha had dumped on the internet.

Luckily, Tony was released from his mother’s expectations at 11, escaping with a kiss to her cheek and a wave to Ana, who promised to make sure his mother didn’t overwork herself. Tony had already verified that Obadiah was gone, likely to a drinking meeting with his cronies. But he was glad he could escape before 1 am. Many of the people at these things didn’t sleep until the wee hours of the morning and Tony had a breakfast to attend the next day. 

He made his way to the basement with a box of granola swiped from the kitchen, much to Ana’s frown, and a pillow. He’d dropped off a meal from the servers earlier. This time he found Barnes in the corner of his lab, curled tightly. “JARVIS? How long has he been in the corner?”

“James has been in the corner 25 minutes. DUM-E attempted to give him a blanket, but it seemed to cause distress. DUM-E was redirected.” Tony smiled. Already JARVIS was learning to read body language and he’d only been truly online for six days. Granted Barnes’s distress was pretty extreme, but it was progress.

Tony waved at DUM-E and walked over to Barnes, “Are you still hungry?”

The long hair shook as Barnes denied the food. “Did you sleep?” Another shake. “Do you need anything before you can sleep?”

Barnes looked at him. “Primary Protocol 3: Report of thoughts in contradiction of Primary protocols. Thought occurred at 17:15 hours today.”

Tony blinked. “Okay.” He thought a moment. So Barnes had been instructed to report thoughts Hydra didn’t want its asset to have. Tony may be able to use that to help the man. “What were the thoughts?”

“Asset wished to return to previous handlers. This thought contradicts Primary Protocol 1.” Barnes croaked. He looked absolutely miserable. More than a failure, this compounded the trained response with the slight revulsion he’d already shown for the treatment at their hands. The dichotomy must be overwhelming.

Tony knelt in front of the man. “Can you tell me why you wished to return?”

Barnes met his eyes and Tony thought he saw something spark across them. “Current handler uses vague instruction. The asset does not have enough training to avoid mistakes. Previous Handlers were specific on defining objectives and mistakes. Less mistakes were made.”

Tony let out a breath. That was not what he had expected. When Steve had broken Barnes out of it in 2013, the man had resisted returning to Hydra with every technique he knew. But he could see where a place where all the rules were spelled out would be comforting. Hell, he was sick of the rules changing on him as often as they did, and he was raised in this society. Looking back(or forward? Time travel gave him a headache!), Barnes may have simply avoided this issue by living by one inviolable rule, ‘stay hidden’.

“Okay, I can help with that a bit. First, from now on if you perceive any vagueness in my instructions, you are to inform me. Second, you will not be retrained by that chair while I am your handler. Do you understand?” Tony waited as Barnes look at him and this time Tony was certain he saw something in those grey eyes. 

“How will the Handler ensure the asset does not make mistakes.”

Well, he had Tony there. Tony hadn’t really thought this through yet. To be fair it had been a long day and this hadn’t been on his original schedule. He racked his brain for a suitable punishment. Until he helped coax Barnes’s morality forward, there needed to be some check for the assassin.

“It will depend on the mistake. How about tomorrow, you ask me about a few mistakes and I’ll give you a few consequences I will use?” Maybe inspiration will hit overnight.

That was the best Tony had at 11pm after more than 6 hours of socializing. He looked over at DUM-E. “Here, the couch is more comfortable. We will work on something else after the holiday craziness. Until then, DUM-E will keep you company, okay? He’s really nice.”

Barnes eyed the bot with obvious misgivings. But he seemed to accept Tony’s word and moved to the couch. Tony refused to debate whether that was trust in Tony or blind obedience. DUM-E beeped at them both before returning to rest mode and Tony sighed.

“J? Hows that server coming? When will it be ready?” This was a straight forward task that JARVIS could already perform. Tony would grab a spare hard drive in the morning to download the server onto as an additional precaution.

“The program and protections will be complete in the morning, Sir.”

“Good enough. I’m saying good night then” He clapped his hands. JARVIS lowered the lights and DUM-E beeped at him. U was the next bot to be created, but Tony was waiting another few years. Until then his family was good as is.

* * *

Tony set up a side bedroom in the lab the next day. He’d offered Barnes a room upstairs, out of the way, at least through the holidays until they could figure out something a bit more long term. The idea of staying upstairs had disturbed the soldier and he’d willingly stood next to DUM-E rather than go upstairs outside of accomplishing his objectives. Tony finally coaxed a form of opinion out of the man eventually and was determined to respect any and all opinions given, if not completely unreasonable.

Barnes also had zero interest in interacting with any other members of the household. Tony wasn’t going to push until the New Years craziness was over. Truthfully, even Tony was getting sick of the constant stream of guests and interruptions, especially during a time of year he'd never really celebrated. It had always been the time his parents died so, SI obligations aside, Tony had spent it with copious lubrication, both of the sexy and drunk variety. Still, after New Years Barnes was getting more acquaintances, preferably before Tony got drawn into a project where he forgot little things like food. Tony wanted to bring Jarvis, at least, into his life. Tony could barely remember to take care of himself, he certainly couldn’t be trusted to take care of another person. This was true in 2018 and it was doubly true in 1992. The Jarvis couple, on the other hand, were experts. But he would give Barnes a moment to breath. Besides he needed sleep and food more than anything right now. 

Breakfast Christmas Eve Morning was a very interesting affair for the rest of the household anyway. It drove some of his concern over Barnes from his mind. He’d been looking forward to this moment for over a week.

“I know we have a lot going on the next few days, but I have an announcement to make.” Tony stood at the head of the breakfast table. He looked around at his family. Rhodey had arrived very late last night and crashed in bed immediately, but he looked chipper enough for breakfast. His mother and Dum Dum had been discussing the present exchange the next day in detail. Tony personally thought they were making it way too complicated, but he’d learned, first from Pepper and now from his mother and Aunt to not argue with them when they make plans.

Aunt Peggy, Morita and Jarvis were arguing about Pierce at the other end of the table. Ana and Angie were exchanging recipe information, something about sugar and milk from what Tony could hear. Gabe Jones had managed to join them with his wife and their grandson. Falsworth also made it across the ocean this year, on Dum Dum’s request. With him still in the British military, both Dum Dum and Peggy wanted his input on things.

Aunt Peggy had hinted she was considering retiring from the spy world, turning the organization she had formed over to her successor. Not Fury. Tony had located him though. A lower level, at least for now, Nick Fury was working his way up the ladder already. His work with Pierce was actually what had drawn Peggy’s attention. Nick Fury was already a cunning SOB, though Tony had done a double take on the lack of eye patch. On some level he’d guessed the man hadn’t been born needing it, but all his pirate jokes had to return the back burner until the man lost his eye, whenever that happened.

This was Tony’s family. He wasn’t going to lose them this time. Not again.

“Hi everybody. Its great we all actually made it this year. I know that the planners have some awesome and chaotic stuff planned for the next few days,” He gestured at Maria, Ana, Angie and Dum Dum. “And I know for all our grumbling, we won’t argue with them.” That got him a few chuckles. Tony grinned and held up his mimosa. “Everyone here. You are all family. You have shed tears, and sometimes blood, for each other. You have laughed together and lost together. You are my family. I never-” Tony had to swallow a moment. Maria grasped his hand and gave it a squeeze. He looked at Rhodey, the only one who really knew what this could mean to Tony. Who knew that Tony had, in fact, already lived without this. The man nodded.

“I love all of you.” Absolute silence met his statement. “When we lost Ho- my father... when I almost lost Mother, I swore I would say that. I want to make the future better. And I’ve discovered, I don’t want to do it alone this time.” Tony set his laptop on the table in front of his plate. He smirked at his mother’s frown. She didn’t like shop talk at the table.

“I knew that I’d never finish my doctorate, but I wanted to finish the project. Everyone has been telling me to finish it. Finish him.” Tony clicked a few keys.

“This is Just A Really Very Intelligent System.”

JARVIS booted up and spoke to the family for the first time. “Hello everyone.”

The group blinked at the screen, some in confusion and some in curiosity. Maria frowned at him.

“Tony, dear. ‘Really Very’ is hardly good English.” Tony bit his lip. He hadn’t looked at Jarvis yet, so he wasn’t sure if anyone had grasped that yet. He hadn’t had the heart to change the name of his most loyal and missed companion, even though his namesake was still alive. “You really should name him, ‘Justified And Really Versatile Intelligent System’. It’s a much better, more accurate title.”

Tony blinked at her and then glanced at Jarvis to see the older man holding Ana’s hand tightly, tears in his eyes. He hoped those were good tears. He’d never been good at telling the difference. Rhodey poked at the laptop on the table. “So Jr?” Tony could always count on Rhodey to know when he needed a distraction from feelings.

The table laughed as Jones’s grandson whined about not understanding. The computer clicked. “The appellation Jr is incomplete. Should the change in title be cataloged?”

Tony leaned over the top of the laptop to look at the screen. “I don’t argue with my mother if I can help it. Consider your name changed, JJ.”

“JJ?”

“Sure, JARVIS Jr.” Angie’s cheeky response to Peggy’s question had the table laughing. Rhodey and Falsworth launched into a rapid discussion with JJ while Maria crowed about his accomplishment to Dum Dum. Tony was in the middle of explaining JJ’s function to Morita when Jarvis appeared at his side. Morita abandoned the conversation quickly and Tony turned to his old friend shyly. He had a lot of respect for Jarvis. As long as he could remember, Jarvis had been the person he’d gotten compliments from on his projects. Showing them to Howard had at best garnered interest, at worst a fight. Maria had been politely interested much of his childhood, but looking back, Tony thought she’d been trying to reconcile her marriage and hadn’t the ‘emotional real estate’ as Pepper called it, for him too. But Jarvis, he’d always been there for Tony.

Jarvis’ face was kind, but his eyes were still wet. “I am deeply honored, Master Tony.” A proud smile was spread across his lips and he grasped one of Tony’s shoulders tightly.

Tony ducked his head. “I wanted him to have a great example to build from. I was hoping you’d help him. Teach him.” He’d wanted the man to be proud of him.

Jarvis looked down at the computer fondly. “You know that Ana and I cannot have children?” He smiled sadly at Tony’s shocked look. A slight shake of his head and he continued, “It was a long time ago and we love each other dearly. We decided that you were the closest thing to a child we’d ever claim. I will love your child as if he were my own grandson.” It was everything Tony had wished to hear.

Tony couldn’t believe he’d pushed this man away before. What he had lost in that, in him. Tony wrapped his arms around Jarvis and pulled him close. Jarvis returned the embrace fiercely, letting Tony bury his face in the strong shoulder. Tony felt the old hands rub his back comfortingly, as they had often when he was child. He swore to himself, he never forget this feeling. _Never_!

“Tony! You gave JJ the birds and bees conversation without me! How could you!” Tony pulled away grinning wetly at Rhodey. Jones was smirking next to him. JJ was chirping away about his confusion over lust to an increasingly red Dum Dum as Jones’s grandkid listened attentively. Tony grinned as he turned back to Rhodey.

“I did nothing of the sort.” Rhodey frowned at him and Tony gave him his most innocent grin, not that he ever expected it to fool anyone, “I gave him the internet.”

Silence reigned for a moment before the room erupted into a chaotic mess of talking. Peggy and Morita were berating him on security while Angie, Dum Dum and Jones defended him. Ana and Maria hid giggles behind their hands as Tony heard Jarvis’s, “_Oh dear.”_

Rhodey and Jones’s grandson, Ton Ton, both started separate conversations with JJ about the internet and Tony was thrilled to see JJ keeping up with both topics, even though his response demonstrated a complete lack of understanding of both the topics and their excitement. Tony found himself backing away with a grin until a mimosa appeared in his sight. He glanced over at Falsworth who grinned at him. Tony took the drink with a nod to the Englishman.

“You remind me of the Captain sometimes.” Falswoth commented idly, watching the chaos at the table. Tony glanced at him in suspicion. Falsworth chuckled. “I know Howard told you about how great Rogers was and his ass shone gold or whatnot,” Tony choked on his mimosa. Falsworth patted his back hard as he coughed, tears streaming down his face as his stomach tried to decide between recovering from choking and laughing at the idea of saying that to the Steve Rogers he had met.

“Anyway, Rogers was actually a real smartass. You guys have the same way of delivering news, same not-innocent, straight face.” Falsworth grinned at him. “Barnes loved the shit out of that. You’d have gotten along with Barnes, but you and Rogers, you guys would have spent eternity trying to out maneuver each other.”

Tony couldn’t help himself, he just stared at Falsworth. He suddenly realized that he’d never heard much about Steve from anyone who knew him except Howard and Aunt Peggy. Both those veiw were horribly skewed towards hero worship. The idea that there were people who could give him a less flattering but more human view of the man hadn’t occurred to him. Even in the future, people either hated the guy or thought the sun rose with his smile. Falsworth spoke of an entirely different perspective. The old British soldier tipped his drink and nodded before walking up to Morita and casually commenting how JJ could possibly help the man learn to mix drinks finally. 

“You know I dislike shop talk at the table.” Tony glanced at his mother as she sidled up next to him. He shrugged sheepishly. Her scolding look softened. She sighed and hugged him close.

“Your father was never good about that rule either. Still, I look forward to getting to know my grandchild. “ She gave him a gimlet eye, “Especially since you seem thoroughly uninteresting in giving me one the normal way.”

Tony tossed back the mimosa, “Normal is overrated.”

“Yes, I suppose you would think that.” Maria watched the group calmly. “I’m proud of you Tony. Merry Christmas.”

Tony melted into the hug and couldn’t think of anyplace, in either timeline, he’d rather be in that moment. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whew! That's a wrap! Please please please comment on my take on our soldier! And on Tony's family!
> 
> This ends this story. Do not worry, there will be more! I have the next story mostly written and outlined. I want to switch views to include our newly freed soldier. :) Stay tuned!
> 
> Notes: The "Question? Don't answer that. Question? Don't answer that either." was pulled from Parent trap because it is the funniest fucking dialogue in my opinion.
> 
> The string of slurrs is taken from an actual pep rally song from Michigan Tech called Tech Once. It banned now but the Lyrics are as follows:  
Tech Once Tech Twice  
Holy Fucking Jesus Christ  
Goddamn Sonofa Bitch  
Go Tech GO!!!
> 
> If you have never heard it, I fully recommend it for frustration moments. 
> 
> "Meet and Grit my teeth" is a play on Meet and Greet
> 
> Gerstner and Allaire are business giants in tech in the 90s. By the way, looking up that kind of stuff is a pain if you want info before 2005 or so! XP
> 
> Also, JARVIS's name really does bug me in that it is truly horrible grammar. I thought it would annoy Maria too.
> 
> Toodles!

**Author's Note:**

> Also a thank you to Eleonora for finding the story that inspired this: Stranger Than You Dreamt It by [ Wix ](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wix). Its been taken down, but I wanted to give them their due!


End file.
